ODD HAPPENINGS 



By 

REV. WALLACE CARNAHAN 



Printed for the Author by 
THE TUCKER PRINTING HOUSE 

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI 



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Copyright 1915 
By REV. WALLACE CARNAHAN 
jackson, Mississippi 



©CU414590 
NOV 13 1915 



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CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 



Preface 5 

I. The Rev. John N. Norton, D.D. 7 

II. A Surprising Competitor 11 

III. A Brave Man's Terror......... 14 

IV. A Weird FuneraL 17 

V. A Startling Confession..... 20 

VI. Runaway Marriages. 27 

VII. A Mysterious Request... 32 

VIII. A Revival in JaiL 37 

IX. "One Sinner that Repented" 41 

X. Unexpected Fruit . 44 

XI. Anniston Episodes 48 

XII. A Haunted House. 56 

XIII. A Remarkable Conversion 60 

XIV. Views of a French Protestant 70 

XV. Little Rock Memories 80 

XVI. "The Way of the Transgressor"... 89 

XVII. St. Mary's Hall Incidents...... 101 

XVIII. Suicide of The SouL 108 

Supplemental: 

XIX. Christ or Barabbas.._._ 115 

XX. The Supernatural in Religion 127 

XXI. Addendum 150 



PREFACE. 



MANY of my friends have been kind 
enough to express such an interest in 
some of the episodes in my clerical life 
that I am led to think that possibly others may 
care to read this narration of odd happenings 
in a long ministry. And I trust that some of 
my younger brethren may be helped by read- 
ing about my perplexities. 

Besides I am impelled to write, because 
I am no longer engaged in regular parish work. 
Idleness is intolerable. I retired from paro- 
chial responsibility before I felt any serious 
decay of strength, for fear I might experience 
the decay before I should be aware of it: A 
deplorable spectacle truly ! A clergyman worn 
out in the highest service of his fellow men, his 
usefulness departed — still holding on to a 
charge for which every one except himself sees 
his unfitness; and it is a pathetic spectacle if 
with that blindness to disability there is the 
spectre of the poor house just beyond the last 
rectory. It is the shame of Christendom that 
wealthy laymen have not provided adequate 
pensions for the worn out clergy. I can say 
this without indelicacy, inasmuch as I am one 
of the few old ministers who do not need a 
pension. 

The shameful failure of the Church to 
provide for old ministers seems to me frightful 



6 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



evidence of the unreality of the religion of 
many of our rich laymen. 

Notwithstanding the shortcomings of 
some rich laymen and all the other discourage- 
ments and heartaches of the ministry, I can 
testify now, near the close of my life, that the 
minister's calling is the happiest in the world. 
True, his reward is not ease and wealth, but it 
is something far better — the unspeakable priv- 
ilege of leading sinners to repentance and show- 
ing them the Way of Life. "They that turn 
many to righteousness shall shine as the stars 
forever and ever." 

I have not told the strangest happenings 
in my ministry for the same reason that 
Bishop R. W. B. Elliott once gave me for not 
telling to the public all he saw and heard on his 
first visit to Mexico, — "I could not expect 
people to believe me." 

Of course I have changed the names of 
persons and places when it would have been 
improper to reveal the real ones. 

I prepared this little volume, at intervals, 
whilst engaged in a work on "Christian 
Economics and Social Evolution." The first 
part of that ambitious design was shattered 
by the great European war; and the latter 
part was anticipated by Prof. H. W. Conn in 
his "Social Heredity and Social Evolution." 

W. C. 

Jackson, Mississippi, 
October 6th, 1915. 



I. 



THE REV. JOHN N. NORTON, D. D. 

My first ministerial work was with the 
Rev. John N. Norton, D. D., as his assistant, 
when he was rector of Ascension Church, 
Frankfort, Kentucky. All too short for me 
as that connection was it afforded me a train- 
ing in pastoral theology that has been most 
valuable to me throughout my ministry. 

There is nothing in my work at Frankfort 
worth recording, but I feel that I must write a 
few lines about my beloved chief. I can add 
nothing of historical value to the sketches of 
Dr. Norton's life that others have written. I 
shall simply pay my little tribute to the mem- 
ory of his noble character, and relate a few 
incidents that may lend piquancy to the 
biographies. 

As everybody in Kentucky, over fifty 
years of age knows, Dr. Norton was a most 
unique character; and he was as interesting as 
he was original. He was the only man, who in 
the pulpit, could make me smile without 
offending my sense of reverence; so uncon- 
scious was his humor, and so incapable was he 
of intentional irreverence. Though a man of 
large wealth he lived very simply, and gave 
away nearly all his income. 

He was full of paradoxes: Extremely 
sensitive, and yet very forgiving; hot in de- 
nouncing wilful wrong, and tender hearted as 



8 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



a grandmother; a high bred gentleman, and 
yet sometimes startlingly plain spoken, in 
racy vernacular. 

He was a composite churchman; a sacra- 
mentarian, and yet intensely evangelical. If 
any of my readers ask me how I reconcile that 
contradiction of terms, I answer, I can't do 
it, but Dr. Norton did it, — in his life. 

A Frankfort lady was asked by a 
Congressman noted for card playing 
whether Dr. Norton was a ''High 
churchman" or a "Low churchman.' ' Quick- 
witted as she was she seemed puzzled; but in 
a moment she answered, "Oh, Dr. Norton is 
everything that is good; as a churchman I 
should say that he is high, low, jack, and the 
game." When the witticism was repeated 
to Dr. Norton, he half smiled and said,"Umph! 
More complimentary than elegant." 

A new parishioner, not knowing that Dr. 
Norton used his horse and buggy every day, 
and nearly every hour of the day, asked for a 
loan of his "funny little team," as the Frank- 
fort boys called it. "Certainly," said the 
Doctor, "and I will ask you to do me a favor. 
Please hand a note to the livery stable man as 
you drive by there." The borrower was sur- 
prised to hear the livery stable man read the 
note aloud to his foreman, "Dear Jones: I 
want to hire a horse and buggy for this after- 
noon. Please send me a quiet horse like my 
eld roan. Yours truly, — John N. Norton." 



TEE REV. JOHN N. NORTON, D.D. 9 

As I have intimated, Dr. Norton was very- 
liberal with his means. One winter when the 
Frankfort cotton factory suspended work, he 
supported nearly all the operatives who could 
find no other work. Of course he never 
mentioned the benevolence, but when it 
leaked out, he said to me, with manifest 
annoyance, "Those foolish people over there 
had to go and blab it on me." 

The Kentucky River divides Frankfort; 
and Dr. Norton assigned to me the south side 
for his weekly distribution of alms. 

One of his regular dependents was an old 
woman. I shall call her Mrs. Tansy. On my 
first errand of Dr. Norton's bounty, when I 
reached the residence of a good woman who 
lived next door to Mrs. Tansy, I was informed 
that she was utterly unworthy of the rector's 
kindness; that she habitually stole the neigh- 
bor's chickens. I was greatly shocked, and 
did not deliver the weekly allowance to Mrs. 
Tansy. When I made my report to the rector 
that evening I told him of the distressing in- 
formation about Mrs. Tansy, and said, "Of 
course, Doctor, I didn't give her the order for 
provisions." "Ah, I am sorry," said the Doc- 
tor, with a quizzical smile, "Now, my son, 
please take the order to the poor old soul to- 
morrow, right early; for you see if we stop our 
little help I am afraid she might steal more 
chickens than ever." When I ventured to 
ask for light on the ethics of that kind of alms- 



10 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



giving, the Doctor replied, "Oh, my dear boy, 
we must not let casuistry harden our hearts." 
I was not convinced at the time, but the inci- 
dent made a strong impression on my heart. 

Dr. Norton's printed sermons have had 
an extensive reading; and I can assure my 
readers, who never heard Dr. Norton preach, 
that half the flavor of the preached sermon is 
lost in the printing. 

Although Dr. Norton never acquired 
much fluency in extempore preaching, he 
could dictate composition to an amanuensis 
faster than any stenographer could take it 
down. 

Dr. Norton enjoyed the pleasantry of 
others keenly, but rarely perpetrated a joke. 
Sensitive as he was to any unkindness, he 
thoroughly enjoyed a joke on himself; for 
example: A literary critic, reviewing a vol- 
ume of his sermons, said that he told too many 
anecdotes; and intimated that the habit indi- 
cated old age (when, in fact, Dr. Norton was 
only fifty); "at least," said the critic, "Dr. 
Norton has reached his anecdotage." 

When the atrocious pun was quoted to 
the doctor, he chuckled in great glee, and said, 
"Pretty good, pretty good — for a reviewer." 



II. 

A SURPRISING COMPETITOR. 

St. James' Church, Greenville, Missis- 
sippi, was my first parish, and I was its first 
rector. I organized the parish and built the 
first church edifice, which, a few years after- 
wards, was destroyed by fire. 

The Rev. J. W. Beckwith, afterwards 
Bishop of Georgia, had held services in "Old 
Greenville" and on Deer Creek, during the 
Civil War; but the Episcopalians, at that 
time, were too few to form a parish. 

Born in Virginia and brought up in Ken- 
tucky, I found much that was novel in that 
unique community. It was a singular mix- 
ture of high culture and unconventionality. 

At that time Greenville had no railroad. 
All traffic and travel were on the Mississippi 
River. It was in the palmy days of the great 
"packets." The Robert E. Lee and the 
Natchez were truly floating palaces. I think 
the Natchez ran no farther up the river than 
Vicksburg. The arrival of the Lee at Green- 
ville was the local event of the week. Her 
whistle was distinguished from that of all 
other boats as readily as a father's voice. 

"The Lee" usually arrived on Sunday 
morning, the hour varying with the amount of 
business at the "Bends" (the local name for 
the landings) that marked nearly every turn 
in that majestic stream. 



12 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



When the Lee arrived, nearly all the men 
boarded her for a social gathering in the for- 
ward part of the boat, misnamed "forecastle." 
It was a kind of informal club. The "bar" 
was well patronized, more for sociability than 
from a craving for liquor. The New Orleans 
papers were distributed, the news discussed, 
and local topics rehearsed to officers and pas- 
sengers. The political questions of the day 
were debated with great ardor; for, like all 
Southerners, the men of Greenville were born 
politicians. Many partook of the dinner, 
which was like a royal banquet. I have never 
seen anything that could be compared with it, 
in the best city hotels and watering places. 

That weekly meeting on the Robert E. 
Lee always suggested to me a gathering of the 
patricians of ancient Rome in the last days of 
the Empire. 

Why dear, saintly old Bishop Green 
placed a raw, young minister in charge of that 
difficult field I could never imagine. But they 
were an interesting people. 

The first striking illustration of their 
unconventionality that I encountered oc- 
curred on the second Sunday after I took 
charge. We had no church edifice as yet, and 
were holding services in a school house. The 
attendance was remarkably good; the ratio of 
men to women unusually large. It was a 
warm day in September, and, of course, the 
door and all the windows were open. 



A SURPRISING COMPETITOR 13 



Although but few of the men took audible 
part in the service, their decorum was perfect, 
until the middle of the sermon; when without, 
to me, apparent cause, all the men except 
General Samuel Ferguson, Colonel William A. 
Percy, and Captain William G. Yerger, pre- 
cipitately left the room — some by the door, 
others by the windows. I thought the men 
had received information of a fire in town, 
though I had heard no bell or pistol shot (the 
usual fire alarm). I noticed with surprise that 
the ladies manifested no excitement, though 
several of them looked annoyed. After ser- 
vice I asked Colonel Percy where the fire was ? 
He replied with some anxiety, "What fire? 
Did you see a fire?" "No," I rejoined, "but 
I supposed there must be a fire by the sudden 
flight of the men/' "Oh," he responded, with 
his philosophical smile, "That was just the 
boys running to meet the Lee. She whistled 
while you were preaching and they couldn't 
resist the siren call." 

The next day several of the young men 
apologized for their "rather unceremonious 
withdrawal from Divine Service." 

Dr. Dunn remarked, "Parson, if the 
Angel Gabriel were preaching the boys would 
leave the service to meet the Lee." 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



III. 

A BRAVE MAN'S TERROR. 

Many years ago I was serving in a parish 
when the yellow fever broke out; and there 
encountered a remarkable illustration of the 
influence of the imagination upon physical 
health. I think the epidemic originated in the 
United States garrison; at any rate my first 
contact with it was in response to a request 
that I should see an enlisted man taken with 
the fever. I found the poor man dying. After 
ministering to him as best I could, I called to 
see a few * 'suspicious cases," and was about to 
leave the grounds when I met the command- 
ant, who asked me whether I had seen Lieut. 
O Leary. I said that I had not, and that I 
did not know he was sick. "Well," the com- 
mandant replied, "he is not really sick, but I 
wish you would see him, for he thinks he has 
the yellow fever. The post surgeon and a 
physician from the town examined him this 
morning and said, most positively, that he had 
not one symptom of the fever, nor any other 
disease." 

The lieutenant and I were good friends, 
and he greeted me cordially. I saw at a glance 



A BRAVE MAN'S TERROR 15 

that he was under great mental strain. He 
had taken to his bed during the changing of 
its linen. It had on it neither sheets nor pil- 
low slips — just a blanket. He had taken off 
only his coat and shoes. I was very unpleas- 
antly impressed by that circumstance, as 
O Leary was a scrupulously neat man. 

Thinking to rally him from his morbid 
terror I said, "Playing sick, eh?" In a doleful 

voice he quickly replied, "Oh, Mr. C , you 

need not try to fool me. I know, and you 
know, that I have yellow fever, and I know 
that I am going to die." 

I then challenged his courage — he was 
naturally a very brave fellow: "Ridiculous! 
You have yellow imagination. Now this 
won't do, O Leary. A soldier and an Irish 
gentleman to give way to childish terror!" 
He only groaned. 

I next appealed to his common sense. 
"Why, man, you talk is if you knew 
more about the matter than the doctors; 
and if you had the disease, it is not necessarily 
fatal; with your fine physique, good doctors 
and good nursing you would almost certainly 
recover; and after all you are in the hands of 
the Heavenly Father who does all things well." 
It was all futile. 



16 ODD HAPPENINGS 

He seemed stunned with fright. Finally 
I read some cheering passages of Scripture, 
offered a prayer and left him. As I was 
going out of the room I said, 4 4 Good 
bye, old fellow. I am going to have a good 
laugh at you tomorrow after you realize how 
groundless your fears have been." 

Lieut. O Leary died that night. The 
army surgeon told me that to the last he never 
had a symptom of yellow fever; that he 
"probably died of heart disease," but that 
there was "no symptom of that except death." 

I think this was a case that called for 
Psycho-therap y; on which subject I have 
something to say in the chapter "Suicide of 
the Soul." 



IV. 



A WEIRD FUNERAL. 

When I was rector of St. James' Church, 
Greenville, Mississippi, the Episcopalians of 
Chicot County, Arkansas, having no resident 
clergyman, looked to me for such ministerial 
offices as I could render. Most of them lived 
on or near Lake Chicot. From Greenville to 
the Chicot settlement was a roundabout jour- 
ney, by boat, either up the river to Columbia 
or down the river to Smith's Landing, thence 
by carriage or horseback to Lake Village or 
the plantation where my services might be 
required. 

One day I received a message that my 
friend, Mr. Cyrus Johnson, of Chicot County, 
had died, and the relatives wished me to bury 
him. It was a very sudden death. He was a 
man of fine physique and manly character, 
beloved by all who knew him. He had died 
at the residence of his brother Col. Lycurgus 
Johnson, where I arrived in the evening. 
Colonel Johnson had sent to Greenville for a 
burial casket. For some reason which I have 
forgotten, there was a long delay, and the 
coffin was not delivered until after midnight. 

The weather and the condition of the 
body were such that it was thought best to 
have the burial without further delay. 

A large number of friends had gathered 
to pay their last tribute of affection and re- 



18 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



spect. The first part of the service was read 
in the spacious parlors of the grand old man- 
sion. The interment was in the family bury- 
ing ground, about two hundred yards from 
the house. 

There was a long procession : The clergy- 
man preceding the pall bearers with their 
precious burden, the brother, sister, nieces 
and nephews following, in silent grief too deep 
for audible weeping; then the friends of the 
deceased, and after them a large number of 
colored people — household servants and plan- 
tation hands — who gave utterance to their 
sorrow in a moaning dirge, at times almost a 
crude chant. It was a dark night and the 
path was lighted by torches borne by the 
servants. 

A rank growth of shrubbery bordered the 
grass covered path, and all around were wide 
spreading trees festooned with sombre gray 
moss, nature's funeral drapery. 

Every moment, some bird, disturbed in 
its rest, sounded a note of fear, and a mocking 
bird would whistle its mellow echo. 

When the head of the cortege reached the 
grave I turned and contemplated the weird 
scene. The flickering torches half revealed 
the forms that marched with silent tread; a 
strong imagination could seem to behold a 
procession to Valhalla. I began the interment 
service in the midst of the oppressive stillness 
that filled me with awe. My voice sounded 



A WEIRD FUNERAL 



19 



strange to my own ears. When I read the 
words, "In the midst of life we are in death,' * 
a muffled sob broke from the lips of the grief - 
stricken sister; when I uttered the words, "O, 
holy and merciful Saviour," an old negro 
whose torch lighted my prayer book, ex- 
claimed in subdued voice, "Oh, bless de Lord!" 
and just as I finished the sentence, "I heard 
a voice from Heaven saying unto me, 'Write 
from henceforth blessed are the dead who die 
in the Lord; for they rest from their labors,' " 
a sweet voice behind me softly said, "Amen!" 
When I came to the words, "may have our 
perfect consummation and bliss," the old man 
who held the torch for my reading dropped it 
from his feeble grasp. I finished the prayer 
from memory and pronounced the benediction. 

At that moment a gibbous moon rose and 
shed a mellow light on the solemn scene; and 
as we returned to the house I thought of Job's 
recollection of God's goodness, "By His light 
I walked through darkness." 



20 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



v. 

A STARTLING CONFESSION. 

The following narrative and a few others 
that I may recount, call for a few words on the 
subject of the Confessional. As this is not a 
controversial work, I shall not enter upon the 
merits of that question. But whatever may 
be said for that institution amongst an igno- 
rant people, and with all the safeguards that 
the Roman Catholic Church aims to throw 
around it, I am very decidedly of the opinion 
that the regular practice of auricular confession 
and judicial absolution, amongst Protestants, 
would produce spiritual parasitism, and under- 
mine real faith in God. And yet I think that 
in those rare cases when one cannot by the use 
of ordinary means find peace of soul, it is well 
"that he should go to a minister of God, open 
his grief, and receive such Godly counsel and 
advice as may tend to the quieting of his con- 
science and the removing of all scruple and 
doubtfulness." 

My own practice has been to discourage 
the opening of grief in cases of marital discord ; 
and in giving my counsel and advice I have 
permitted as little disclosure of unhappy 
secrets as possible. Self revelation of the dark 
things of life is apt to be followed by a feeling 
of degradation. To God alone may the whole 
heart wisely be laid bare. 



A STARTLING CONFESSION 21 



At one time in my early ministry my • 
study was in an office building which had no 
other occupant at night. 

One Saturday I was busy on an unfin- 
ished sermon until nearly midnight (a bad 
practice) when I heard a gentle knock on my 
door. I opened it, and found a genteel, intel- 
ligent looking young man standing in the 
hall, — a man I had never seen before. I shall 
call his name Peters (of course, I shall use no 
real names in such incidents as this.) He was 
silent for a moment, and then asked whether I 
was the Episcopal minister. I said, "yes," 
and invited him to come in. I gave him a 
seat and offered to take his hat, which, how- 
ever, he retained, with, "No, I thank you; I 
will just hold it." Then there was a pause 
with an embarrassment of manner that led me 
to think that he wished to engage my services 
for his marriage; but a closer scanning of his 
face soon dispelled that conjecture. 

The man's countenance was troubled; 
there was evidently something on his mind 
that disturbed him. He sat alternately gaz- 
ing at the floor and scrutinizing my face. He 
would start to speak, and then check himself, 
as if dreading to disclose what was on his mind. 
He would draw a long breath, and then expel 
the air with a loud "whew!" In spite of this 
queer behavior there was an air of good breeding 
about the man. 



22 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



His silence was becoming embarrassing; 
so I said, as kindly as I could, "What can I do 
for you?" He replied, "I don't know that you 
can do anything for me." The man's strange 
manner suggested insanity, and I began to 
feel a little nervous. He and I were the only 
persons in the building, and my study was on 
the second floor at the rear end of a long hall. 

I took a mental measure of the young 
man's muscular value, and hastily concluded 
that in a physical conflict he would probably 
prove the "better man." I continued the 
conversation with the conciliatory remark that 
I wished very much that I could do something 
for him. 

At last he spoke quite rapidly: "I saw 
the light in your window. I thought it was the 
rector's study, and I came up here to ask your 
advice. I must get some relief or I shall go 
crazy." With that he arose saying, "By your 
leave," and went to the door, locked it and 
returned to his seat, first drawing his chair 
close up to mine. He then asked in a whisper, 
"Is there any one else in hearing?" I assured 
him there was not. He went on: "My name 
is Peters, William Peters," and then leaning 
forward until his face almost touched mine, 
• whispered, "J killed a rnanV 

It is needless to say that I was startled; 
but, controlling my nerves fairly well, I said 
to him in the calmest voice that I could com- 
mand, "Well, my friend, I hope there were 



A STARTLING CONFESSION 23 



extenuating circumstances," (I had practiced 
law before I was a clergyman) "and that you 
have repented of your sin." He replied with 
great agitation, "No, sir; there were no exten- 
uating circumstances; it was a mean, wicked 
murder, and I don't know whether I have 
truly repented or not." Then he swayed his 
body back and forth, got up, paced the floor 
for a minute or two, sat down again, and said, 
"Well, as I have told you that I am a murderer 
I may as well make a clean breast of it." I 
interrupted him to say, "Of course, whatever 
you may tell me shall be received in sacred 
confidence." He replied, "Oh, I am not hesi- 
tating for fear you will give me away. I have 
too high an opinion of clergymen for that. I 
meant to say at the start that I trust your 
honor absolutely." 

After a moment's pause, and drawing a 
long, deep breath he went on, "Do you re- 
member the death of John Williams?" 
I said that I did. "Well," he continued, 
"you know that his death was thought 
to have been accidental?" "Yes," said I, 
"from what I read in the papers I thought so." 
"Well," said Peters, "it wasn't. I killed him 
for his money — his. and mine. We had been 
playing cards. I think Williams cheated, and 
I was angry at him about that, but don't 
understand me to be making excuses. When 
I took the money from his pocket, I left some 
there to avert the suspicion of robbery 



24 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



Oh, it was so mean, so wicked! The Lord 
knows I have suffered enough for it. No, I 
don't know that I have suffered enough, 
though it seems to me that Hell can't be much 
worse than my suffering over that awful crime." 

I here interposed, "Well, if you have truly 
repented of your sin God certainly will forgive 

• you. Don't you know that Scripture, 'The 
blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,' " 
and went on to explain to him the nature of 
repentance and the vicarious sacrifice of the 
Redeemer; of God's love, and the fatherly 
tenderness of His mercy. My visitor replied, 
"Yes, I know all that is true, for I had a 
Christian mother and went to Sunday School 
when I was a boy, and used to go to Church 
until I got to drinking and gambling; but I 

' have stopped all that devilish meanness, and 
would like to be a Christian if I could feel that 
God would accept me." 

I again tried to make clear to him the 
grounds of a penitent sinner's acceptance with 
God. Peters seemed for a moment to be in a 
reverie from which he awoke with a start, and 
said, "I think the reason I can't realize God's 
forgiveness, for which I have prayed with all 
my might, is because maybe I ought to give 
myself up, confess my crime and be hanged! 
Whew! That is what gets me. That is what 
I want your advice about. I used to be plucky 
but Lord! how I dread hanging! I have not, 



A STARTLING CONFESSION 25 



like most murderers I have read about, been 
afraid I would be found out; and I am not 
afraid of Williams' ghost, for I am not an 
idiot; what does haunt me is the thought that 
I deserve hanging, and that the Lord won't 
forgive me until I accept the just penalty for 
my crime. Do tell me, is there any hope of 
forgiveness for a man that conceals his crime 
from the State, and dodges the penalty?" 

I was puzzled. I was a very young min- 
ister and this was my first occasion for casuis- 
try. I hesitated for a minute, and then said, 
* 'Let us pray." We both kneeled down at my 
desk, and I prayed aloud for the murderer's 
true repentance, for Divine forgiveness, and 
for God's guidance. Peters wept bitterly and 
groaned pathetically. I finished the prayer 
and arose from my knees with a clear convic- 
tion of my duty. 

I asked Peters whether Williams had any 
relatives, — any one who was entitled to his 
support, — wife, mother, sister or children. 
"No," said Peters, "he never married; both 
his parents are dead, he has no sister, and his 
only brother is rich." I went on to tell him 
it would be his duty to support any dependent 
of Williams', but as that was not called for, 
there was nothing he could do as restitution; 
and added, "I believe that it is not your duty 
to give yourself up to the law and expiate your 
crime on the gallows. That would end a life 



26 ODD HAPPENINGS 

that may now be devoted to God's service. I 
feel sure that God has forgiven you; pray for 
faith, and the burden of guilt will be lifted 
from your soul." The man grasped my hand 
and thanked me again and again. 

For the rest of his years he seemed to live 
a religious life, though not a cheerful one. 



VI., 



RUNAWAY MARRIAGES. 

In the early years of my ministry I 
received a good many requests to marry run- 
away couples; but, in the course of time, I 
acquired such a reputation for discouraging 
such escapades that very few runaways 
sought me. 

My first experience with runaways was 
in a little parish in the Southwest. 

One evening about sunset I heard a loud 
knocking at my door; on opening it I found a 
vigorous looking young man in a state of great 
excitement, with a formidable looking whip 
in his hand, which he handled very signifi- 
cantly. He asked in an anxious tone, "Is this 
the preacher?" I first thought my caller had 
come to whip me for some imaginary offense, 
and I answered diplomatically, "I am a preach- 
er, but I think I can't be the one you are after 
with that whip." 

He laughed nervously, and said, "Why, 
bless your soul, I don't want to whip 
anybody. I want you to marry me, 
quick. She is right out here in my buggy." 
I replied very calmly, "I don't know about 
that; let us talk it over. Has the young lady 
the consent of her parents?" He almost 
yelled, "Why, of course not! That is why I 
am in such a hurry. My dear sir, her father 
is after us with the fastest team in the county, 



28 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



and my horse is played out. For mercy's 
sake hurry up! I will pay you anything you 
ask." "Oh," said I, "the fee cuts no figure 
in it. Have you secured the license?" I was 
trying to gain time for the pursuing father, 
"No, sir," he replied, "we haven't time. You 
know a marriage is legal without it." "Valid, 
but not legal," I parleyed. "You know there 
is a heavy fine for a clergyman who performs 
a marriage service without a license." "Oh, I 
will pay the fine," said he, "you may hold this 
two-hundred-dollar watch as security. Please 
do hurry." 

"Let me speak to the young lady" I 
said. She was a charming young creature, 
certainly not over fifteen. She was much 
agitated, on the verge of hysterics. I tried to 
calm her, and asked her to come into the 
rectory and talk over the matter with me. 
"Be my wife's guest," said I, "until your 
father comes, and I will try to reconcile him 
to your marriage." "Oh, I thank you," she 
said, "but we can't do that. You don't know 
my father." She began to weep, and the lover 
jumped into the buggy and drove off as fast 
as his jaded horse could travel. 

I need hardly say that they quickly se- 
cured the services of another minister, who 
received a handsome fee, and was not fined 
for marrying a couple without a license, — 
whereat I greatly wondered. 



RUNAWAY MARRIAGES 



29 



The white haired father soon arrived, 
cursing and weeping and wailing, "Oh, my 
baby! My poor, dear baby!" He searched 
in vain for the runaways until dark, and slowly 
returned to a desolate home, a broken-hearted 
old father. 

I refrain from recording the parental 
experience of the minister who contrib- 
uted to the breaking of that old heart; for 
it is a presumptuous thing to interpret God's 
judgments. And yet I can understand Crom- 
well's opinion that "the hottest place in the 
pit is reserved for ministers of the Gospel who 
sin against light for pelf." 



The queerest request came to me one 
Sunday night when a lady about thirty years 
of age, wished to be married to one of her 
pupils, a lad of some sixteen or seventeen 
years. He began the conversation with some 
conventional remarks about my health and the 
weather; but the lady rather impatiently inter- 
rupted him with the cogent suggestion, "Well, 
Jack, we might as well get down to business 
with the preacher," whereupon the boy picked 
up courage to say that they wished to be 
married. 

I asked the boy if he had the consent of 
his parents; he admitted that he had not, but 
that he was sure they would approve of the 
marriage; and he admitted that he was not 



30 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



of age. I tried very solemnly to dissuade them 
from their folly, but the lady was so giddy, 
and the lad was so intent upon the marriage 
that my advice was futile. Of course they 
easily found another minister to serve them. 

One of the most soul-sickening things in 
Christendom is the fact that there are minis- 
ters of the gospel, almost everywhere, who will 
turn their backs on decency and righteousness, 
and sell the sacred functions of their office for 
a paltry wedding fee. 



I thought to tell of several other run- 
away matches, but the details of the rest are 
either too harrowing, or are not very inter- 
esting. I shall, therefore, just mention the 
outcome of all clandestine marriages the 
subsequent history of which I have any 
knowledge. 

No. 1 : The couple were divorced within 
a few years. No. 2 : The husband eloped with 
another man's wife. No. 3: Within a year 
after the marriage the husband kicked the 
young wife down stairs and broke a rib. 

In the worst case of all, I cannot give any 
part of the sickening tragedy for fear of giving 
pain to the relatives. I do not know, but I 
think that the minister who married that 
couple is now keeping company with Judas 



RUNAWAY MARRIAGES 31 



Iscariot and Pontius Pilate — but may be he 
repented. I hope so. 

In the last case that I shall mention the 
retribution fell on the man. A promising 
young professional man ran away with a most 
fascinating young woman, though it was said 
her parents had no reason for opposing the 
match except that the young man was not 
rich. She became a tyrannical termagant, 
destroyed the husband's happiness and 
wrecked his professional career by her insane 
craving for social pre-eminence, and her 
insatiable avarice. 

I have never known one happy domestic 
life to follow a clandestine marriage. "Honor 
thy father and thy mother" does, indeed, seem 
to be a commandment that carries its sanction 
in this life, as well as the life to come. 



32 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



VII. 

A MYSTERIOUS REQUEST. 

Many years ago I was visiting a country 
parish which had been vacant for some time. 
I had declined a call, but consented to serve 
while waiting for another call to take effect. 
The town was situated on a beautiful southern 
river, remote from the residence of any Epis- 
copal minister. When the Episcopalians of 
the neighborhood heard that a clergyman of 
their Church was sojourning near them, my 
services were sought for several baptisms, for 
a funeral, and for a few marriages. One of the 
weddings took place at the residence of the 
bride, the daughter of a wealthy planter. He 
lived on the opposite side of the river, as did 
also the bride-groom elect, who sent a pretty 
boat for me on the evening of the day the 
marriage was to be celebrated. The boat was 
manned by a strong, intelligent negro boy of 
about eighteen years of age. 

It was a beautiful evening; the swiftly 
running water, the banks lined with noble old 
trees, and a glorious sunset presented a scene 
of entrancing loveliness. When about half 
way across the river, the boy rested his oars 
for a moment, and handed me a daintily en- 
veloped note, which was sealed. The con- 
tents, as nearly as I can remember, were 
as follows : 



A MYSTERIOUS REQUEST 33 



11 To the Episcopal Minister who is to officiate 
at the wedding tonight; 

"Dear Sir — If you will come to the cabin 
of Old Stephen Martin at ten o'clock tonight 
you can help a person who is in great trouble. 
Please come alone and tell no one of your 
errand. Martin's cabin is the last one on the 
left, in the quarter. Knock with four taps, 
and when the door is opened, please say, 
l Dum spiro spero,' and then you shall know 
what is desired. Please write your consent on 
the back of this note. At any rate, return 
the note. 

"Anxiously and respectfully, 

"HONNEUR." 

I was perplexed to know what to do. 
The possibility of the note being a cry for 
some help that I might render a burdened 
heart appealed to me strongly, but the secrecy 
of the thing was repugnant. 

A sinister purpose on the part of the 
author of the note occurred to me, as a possible 
explanation of the mystery; but I could im- 
agine no reason for any evil plot against me, 
unless it was to rob me of the wedding fee, 
which I might be expected to have in my 
pocket after the wedding; but I soon dis- 
missed that theory as too improbable, and 
then was completely at sea. 

I asked the boy what kind of a man 
Stephen Martin was. He was ready with his 



34 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



answer. "Ole Uncle Stephen? Why, he 
mighty good ole yaller man. He not much 
good to work, he so ole; but he mighty kind 
ole man; he got rheumatiz powerful bad." 
I then asked him what family he had. "Oh," 
said the boy, "he fambly gone dead long ago, 
'ceptin' de son what run off." "Who lives 
with him?" I asked; and the reply came some- 
what hesitatingly, "Nobody don't live with 
him 'ceptin' he gran'daughter. She mighty 
nice gal. She most white." "How old is 
she?" I asked. "She 'bout twenty, I reckon," 
was the answer. "I suppose she has plenty of 
beaux?" I ventured to remark. "No sir-ree!" 
said the boy with surprise, "None of dese dar- 
kies dassent wink at Rachel Martin. Dey 
call her 'Miss Rachel,' same's she was a white 
lady." Whereupon he chuckled to himself, 
as if enjoying the idea of a colored man daring 
to court Rachel Martin. 

I continued the examination of my wit- 
ness, rather dubiously, and said, "Of course 
all the white folks are very friendly to Rachel." 
He replied, with evident caution, "All de 
ladies like to have Miss Rachel sew for 'em; 
she sew mighty purty; and she can sew roses 
and all such on de table covers. Oh, she pow- 
erful smart, I tell you, — and purty!" — then he 
whistled his rapture. I wanted to ask an- 
other question, but did not for fear of seeming 
to reflect upon the girl. I then asked the 
boy who wrote the note. He answered very 



A MYSTERIOUS REQUEST 35 



promptly that he didn't know. I asked him 
who gave it to him, and he said one of Col. M.'s 
(the father of the bride) servants gave it to 
him to "hand to de preacher." 

I soon saw that nothing further was to 
be probed out of the boy. If he knew any- 
thing significant he had been well instructed 
to conceal it. I still had no clue to the mys- 
tery. The most tenable conjecture was that 
I was wanted to unite some couple in marriage 
at Old Stephen Martin's, — probably some one 
with Rachel; but why this secrecy ? That was 
still a mystery. 

After a few minutes' reflection I made up 
my mind. I concluded that I could not con- 
sistently be a party to anything that was to 
be hidden. I felt sure that I was wanted for 
some service that I should be expected to 
conceal; and that was a thing I could not 
bring myself to do in the dark. 

While searching my pockets for a pencil 
with which to write my answer the boy 
handed me one that I suspected the writer of 
the note had provided. It was too costly a 
pencil to be the property of a negro boy. 
This is what I wrote on the back of the note: 

"On the Boat, Mid-Stream, October — , 18 — 

"To Honneur: 

"In a proper way I should be most glad to 
be able to serve any one in trouble; but I can- 
not think it right to make the appointment 



36 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



you request. Before I can meet you at 
Stephen Martin's I must know what you wish 
me to do. If you will clear the matter of all 
mystery I shall receive the revelation in 
sacred confidence. I shall then consent or 
refuse to comply with your wishes. 

"I shall go to the west end of Col. M.'s 
south gallery shortly after nine o'clock tonight, 
when I can receive any further communication 
you may wish to make. Do right and trust 
God. Respectfully,"— 

(My signature.) 

The marriage service was over at fifteen 
minutes after nine. I then went to the place 
mentioned and waited about half an hour, but 
received no message. I then went into the 
house. I scanned many a face in the wedding 
company, to see whether any countenance 
should disclose the possession of the secret; 
but I could not see a sign of mystery or unhap- 
piness on any face in all that large company. 

I have never solved the mystery of that 
strange note, but I have my suspicions; and I 
have never regretted that I did not meet 
"Honneur" at old Stephen Martin's. 



VIII. 



A REVIVAL IN JAIL. 

When I was rector of St. Andrews' 
Church, Seguin, Texas, it was my habit to 
hold service in the county jail every Friday 
afternoon, where there were always confined 
half a dozen to half a hundred prisoners, serv- 
ing terms of imprisonment for minor offenses 
or awaiting trial for grave crimes. At the 
time of the happening of which I am now 
writing there was an unusually large number 
of prisoners in the jail, amongst them a few 
desperate criminals. The most notorious one 
could not have been more than twenty-five 
years old; a handsome fellow, with exceedingly 
bright eyes, and most insinuating manners. I 
shall call him Tom Knight (which was not his 
name). 

At my first visit after Knight was 
lodged in the jail he appeared to be very much 
interested in the service. He joined audibly in 
the Lord's Prayer, and tried to interest the 
other prisoners in my talk, remarking in a loud 
whisper to one who was smoking a pipe, "Put 
that out! Have you no manners?" At the 
conclusion of my next service, Knight asked 
me to lead with a hymn, "Something familiar 
that the boys know; just line it out and some 
of us will join in; I am sure some of them have 
had good mothers like mine, who taught them 
to sing." 



38 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



I told Knight that, although I had been 
blessed with the best mother in the world, she 
had never succeeded in teaching me to sing; 
that I never tried to raise the tune in church 
but once, and that effort was a failure." 
Knight then asked me to lend the prisoners 
some hymn books, and he would "teach them 
the best he knew how," and added very earn- 
estly, "You see, Parson, we want to keep up 
the interest that you have awakened. If we 
have no religious exercises between Fridays, 
some of us might backslide." It is needless to 
say that I was delighted with these tokens of 
spiritual awakening amongst these criminals. 
It was the first time I had noted any impres- 
sion my services had made. 

Meeting the jailor on the street a few 
days after I had given the prisoners the hymn- 
als, he remarked to me, "Parson, you have 
started a regular revival at my hotel (that was 
his euphemism for the jail). I have never 
seen anything like it. Tom Knight has taught 
the boys to sing beautifully. He has com- 
mitted several of the hymns to memory, and 
when it gets too dark to use the hymn books 
Knight lines it out to the boys and they sing 
nearly all night long. I told them that they 
had better sing more in day time and get their 
sleep at night; and what do you think he said?" 
I told the jailor I couldn't imagine; and so he 
told me that Knight said, "We feel more 
religious in the dark, when we can't see each 



A REVIVAL IN JAIL 



39 



other's bad faces, and it helps to kill our heavy 
time to sleep in daylight." I remarked to the 
jailor, "What a thoughtful fellow Knight is," 
and the sequel proved that he really was. 

At my next visit to the jail I told the 
prisoners how happy I was that they had 
learned to sing hymns; and how earnestly I 
hoped that they would continue to feel their 
present deep interest in religion. 

The "revival" was kept up for some time, 
but alas! It collapsed. The collapse was a 
mortifying one to me. One night just before 
court was to meet, the prisoners all escaped. I 
could not think so hard of that; the love of 
liberty is such a strong impulse. But the 
way they escaped! 

Every night they detached the iron 
handle from their water bucket and picked 
out the mortar around one of the large stones 
in the jail wall; and when the rock became 
thus loosened they pulled it in, letting it fall 
on one of their mattresses to deaden the sound. 
The singing had been kept up to prevent the 
jailor } on his rounds, from hearing the sound of 
their picking at the wall. 



40 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



Tom Knight left this note for me : 

"Dear Mr. C. — We regret that we shall 
not have an opportunity to say goodbye to 
you. We thank you for all your kindness. 
We leave only because we desire a wider field 
of usefulness. 

"With profound esteem,- 

"Tom Knight, and Others." 

My dear friend, Governor Ireland, whose 
home was in Seguin, never got done poking fun 
at me about that Revival. 

He would darkly hint at the dreadful con- 
duct of a "clergyman who could be guilty of 
teaching criminals to sing hymns as a means 
of escaping from jail." 

I never ventured a retort but once, and 
then I got the worst of it. Governor Ireland 
was the ablest lawyer at the bar. I said, 
"Governor, what is the amount of fees that 
you lost by that jail delivery?" He promptly 
but slowly replied, "About as much as you got 
for clearing the prisoners." 

It took a much brighter man than I to 
get ahead of John Ireland. 



IX. 



ONE SINNER THAT REPENTED. 

I must record another chapter in the his- 
tory of my ministrations in the Guadalupe 
County jail, somewhat to balance the jail 
revival. 

I think it was in the year 1879 that Bishop 
R. W. B. Elliott and I took a frontier mis- 
sionary trip, — camping out as we went along — 
rarely sleeping under a roof. 

I must indulge myself in a digression, 
suggested by the mention of Bishop Elliott. 
He was my bishop for the first seven years of 
his Episcopate, and my dear friend from the 
day we met to the end of his beautiful life. 
He was the loveliest man I ever knew. 

If I should tell of his unselfish devotion 
to duty, his quiet courage in dealing with per- 
sonal problems, his wise administration of 
affairs, and his fascination in the social circle, 
I should still leave unnamed a subtle charm 
and forcefulness of personality that defy 
description. As his noble successor once said 
to me, "The Lord never made but one Robert 
Elliott." 

To resume my story : Bishop Elliott and 
I were crossing over from the Nueces Valley 
to Bandera, a pretty rough ride in those days, 
even in a good spring wagon. 



42 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



Driving along, over the "divide" one 
morning, we passed a wagon with about half a 
dozen rough looking young men. As the cus- 
tom was, the Bishop and I saluted the other 
party with a "Good morning, gentlemen!" 
They returned our politeness with a cordial 
"Howdy?" After the wagon had passed on a 
few yards, we heard a shout: "Hallo! Stop a 
minute!" We stopped our team, and looking 
back saw one of the young men running 
toward us. He came up on the side of our 
wagon on which I was seated, and, holding out 
his hand, asked, "Ain't you Mr. C?" I said, 
"Yes, but I am ashamed to say I don't recall 
your face." He replied with a hearty smile, 
"Why, I'm Madison, Dan Madison. Don't 
you remember the youngest one in that tough 
bunch in the Seguin jail, — the fellow that 
blubbered when you talked to the boys about 
their mothers' prayers?" 

I did then recall the boyish face that 
seemed so ashamed of his plight. "Well," 
continued Madison, "I stopped you just to 
thank you for the good you done me. You 
sure did make me ashamed of myself. I want 
to tell you I have stopped all my meanness, 
and I am trying to live an honest life. Good- 
bye." I need not say that the incident did 
me good. I felt repaid for all my jail work 
in Seguin. 

I never encountered any intentional rude- 
ness from a prisoner but once. I was holding 



ONE SINNER THAT REPENTED 43 



services in the jail at Gonzales, Texas. One of 
the prisoners was awaiting his trial for per- 
jury, having served a term in the penitentiary 
for horse stealing. I think he had the worst 
countenance I ever saw. He was smoking a 
cigarette (a habit that will demoralize any 
one) and coming near me, he put his face close 
to mine, puffed the smoke in my face, and 

said, "d rot!" Another prisoner, a little 

red-headed fellow with a pleasant face, jerked 
the rude man back, with the rebuke, "That is 
the act of a coward;" and, turning to me, said, 
"Parson, don't mind him; he ain't got no more 
sense than a rat." 



44 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



x. 

UNEXPECTED FRUITS 

I think it was in the winter of 1880 that 
Bishop Elliott made a visitation to Boerne, 
Texas, which is the subject of this story in 
two chapters. 

At that time I was Rector to St. Luke's 
Church, San Antonio; which city was the 
Bishop's home. 

The journey to Boerne, some thirty-five 
miles northwest of San Antonio, was in that 
day, made by stage coach, over a rough moun- 
tain road. 

Upon the Bishop's return I asked him 
about his recent trip, and he told me that it 
was the most depressing visitation he had 
ever made. 

Boerne is a German settlement. At that 
time there were only three American families 
in the town, very few Episcopalians, and no 
clergyman in charge. The Bishop told me 
that at the time appointed for the service (it 
was at night) it was raining and a stiff norther 
blowing. I think the service was held in a 
school house, which was lighted by coal oil 
lamps. An attempt had been made to warm 
the room, but the stove smoked, and the fire 
was allowed to go out. The windows having 
been opened to let the smoke out the wind 
blew out all the lamps but one. 



UNEXPECTED FRUITS 



45 



In that cold, damp air, and by the light of 
the one lamp that could be kept lighted, the 
Bishop went through the service and preached. 
There was no singing and only one voice audi- 
bly responded in the psalter and the canticles. 
The very small congregation seemed to be 
apathetic, and no one remained after the ser- 
vice to greet the Bishop. The Bishop told me 
that in all his ministry he had never preached 
so poor a sermon, and never had held a service 
that seemed so useless. 

To add to the Bishop's disheartening expe- 
rience at Boerne, on the return journey he was 
called upon, for four hours, to help a physician 
hold a poor insane woman who was being taken 
to an asylum. He said, "That stage coach 
ride was the most nerve-racking experience of 
my life, not excepting all the strain of the 
Civil War." The Bishop had been a brave 
Confederate soldier. 



About six months after the incidents just 
narrated, when Bishop Elliott was in Europe, 
I received a call from a lady, who asked me to 
come to the hotel to see her husband, whom 
she was taking home in a neighboring state, 
to die. Having consumption she had taken 
him to Boerne in hope of recovery. That 
climate was famous for its virtues in cases of 
tuberculosis; but the poor fellow had gone 
there too late. 



46 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



The lady told me that her husband had 
been an unbeliever for many years, and that 
all her efforts to win him to the faith had been 
fruitless; until one cold, rainy night in Boerne 
she had persuaded him to accompany her to a 
service held by Bishop Elliott. He reluct- 
antly went, simply as the wife's necessary 
escort. She told me of the dismal circum- 
stances, and of the Bishop's sermon; which 
was preached in a quiet, conversational tone 
without notes. The subject was the sorrow of 
the Saviour over impenitent sinners; the 
preacher spoke of the infinite patience of God, 
and the cruelty of indifference to His tender 
love. 

The lady said that her husband was 
very silent on the way from the service, and 
was unusually wakeful at his retiring hour. 
She said he waked her about midnight and 
begged her to pray for him; that Bishop 
Elliott's sermon had made him realize what 
a wretched, heartless sinner he was, and how 
real and how great was God's goodness; that 
he craved Divine mercy and forgiveness, and 
that he was praying for faith in the Saviour's 
redemption. The lady said that her husband 
had ever since that night read his Bible faith- 
fully and attended the occasional services 
held in Boerne, until pr^sically too weak. 

I went to the hotel to see the man, and 
found him in the last stage of consumption. 



UNEXPECTED FRUITS 47 



After a quiet conversation I thought the 
man was truly penitent and that he had faith 
enough to receive Baptism. I accordingly 
baptized him and gave him the Holy 
Communion. 

A few weeks after their return home the 
wife wrote me of her husband's peaceful death, 
and of her own gratitude to God for her hus- 
band's blessed conversion at the eleventh 
hour. 

When Bishop Ellott returned home, I told 
him of the incident, and he remarked, "To 
God give the praise, the treasure truly was in 
an earthen vessel." 



48 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



XI. 

ANNISTON EPISODES. 

Before recording a few incidents in my 
six years' rectorship of Grace Church, Annis- 
ton, Alabama, I must pay my tribute to the 
memory of the proprietors of the blast fur- 
naces, cotton factory, and other mills of the 
place. The Tylers and Nobles owned every- 
thing in Anniston at that time. They were 
Christian capitalists. I have known but few 
rich men who recognized as fully as they did 
the moral obligations of wealth. 

The character of these men was, of course, 
largely traceable to godly parents, and partly 
to the influence of Bishop Wilmer. The 
Bishop of Alabama was mighty with men. 
For persuasive eloquence in the pulpit and in 
private, I have never known his equal. 

The Tylers and Nobles built Grace 
Church and rectory at a cost of about $50,000, 
and endowed the parish. Mr. Samuel Noble 
and his children invested about $40,000.00 in 
the diocesan school edifice for girls, and 
erected a building for a boys' parochial school, 
costing about $20,000.00; and Mr. John W. 
Noble (after my rectorship) built St. Michael's 
Church, rectory, and parish school house, 
costing about $125,000.00. 

This last named work was the outgrowth 
of the little mission of which I am about to 



ANNISTON EPISODES 



49 



speak. However, it is not the history of 
Grace Church, nor St. Michael's, nor even of 
the little factory mission that I am writing; 
but a poor, tame little story of one soul lifted 
out of moral darkness and spiritual destitu- 
tion, and permitted to know something of the 
blessedness of Divine Grace. 

Shortly after I took charge of the parish, 
I became much interested in the people of the 
"factory quarter," — the poorest of all the 
numerous employees of the place. 

The large cotton factory, but recently 
established, gave employment to several hun- 
dred men, women and half grown children of 
the most ignorant class of the Southern white 
people. 

I had occasionally met some of this class 
elsewhere; but never before in any large num- 
bers, nor in a pastoral relation. 

I had seen poverty enough amongst the 
cultivated people of the South, ruined by the 
Civil War; and had ministered to it with my 
heart's best sympathy, but I had now to learn 
a new lesson in the pastoral office. 

For several years after I removed to 
Anniston, I was the only resident clergyman, 
and, therefore, the whole population was in a 
measure, my flock. Amongst the poorest 
class there was not one Episcopalian. 

Although at least one member of every 
family in Factory Quarter was employed in the 
mills at good wages, there was much suffering 



50 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



amongst them; the larger part of it the result 
of ignorance, laziness and waste. 

The spiritual destitution of these people 
was more deplorable than their material 
poverty. I spent half of my time visiting 
them; trying to minister religious instruction, 
comfort, and encouragement, especially to the 
sick, of whom there were a great many. Most 
of them had come there with enfeebled bodies; 
and the winter having been unusually severe, 
many cases of pneumonia were developed; a 
large percentage of deaths ensued in spite of 
the skill and devotion of Dr. R. P. Huger, one 
of the best physicians and one of the truest 
Christian gentlemen I have ever known. 

The depleted physical condition of his 
patients was not the only cause of the unusual 
number of deaths; the nursing was incredibly 
poor; rarely was the medicine given as pre- 
scribed, and sometimes not at all; domestic 
remedies ("yarbs") often being substituted. 
The doctor had difficulty in the use of stimu- 
lants for the sick women- and children, because 
the heartless husbands and fathers would 
drink the stimulants, even though medicated. 

The factory proprietors paid for medical 
attendance, and never failed to respond to my 
calls for contributions for the relief of the 
needy. Dr. Huger does not to this day know 
how often I discovered his quiet charity 
amongst his patients, — medicine, food, and 
clothing bestowed upon those poor people out 



ANNISTON EPISODES 



51 



of his then moderate income. He never 
breathed a word of it to me, his pastor and 
dearest friend. I am thankful to know that 
now, after many years of distinguished suc- 
cess in his profession, he has accumulated 
ample provision for his declining years. 

Perhaps it may not be improper for me to 
say here, parenthetically, that in my younger 
days I had such a reputation for disapproving 
of notorious knaves that it now behooves me 
to praise some of the good men I have known. 
It seems to me that we clergy are often stingy 
in our praise of men; although we are generally 
lavish enough in praising the ladies; God 
bless them! 

At the time of which I am writing the 
Episcopal Church was the only one that held 
regular services in Anniston, and I, therefore, 
urged the factory people to attend public 
worship at Grace Church, and send their 
children to its Sunday School. 

Although my prosperous parishioners 
were most kind to the few poor people who 
ventured to come to their church, and (being 
well bred) never wore their fine apparel to 
church, my efforts to induce the factory people 
to attend Grace Church in any considerable 
number, were a failure. They imagined that 
they were not wanted at the "rich folks' 
church;" and so I determined to afford them 
an opportunity for public worship in their 
own quarter. 



52 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



I looked in vain for a suitable place; and 
at last was obliged to utilize a large blacksmith 
shop that had been abandoned. Mr. A. L. 
Tyler granted me the use of it, and gave me the 
money to put it in order. I had it floored, 
walls whitewashed, and glass put in the win- 
dows. The irreverent boys of the town called 
my new chapel "Saint Blacksmith Shop." 

The attendance at "preaching" was pret- 
ty good; but I found it harder to secure pupils 
for my Mission Sunday School than to provide 
a place for their instruction. The parents 
seemed strangely suspicious of my motives. 
As I went from door to door, canvassing for 
pupils, I noticed that an old man named 
Holcomb, who lived upon the earnings of a 
puny grand child, seemed to be following me. 
I knew the man to be a mischief-maker, and so 
I turned around and entered a house he had 
just left. 

It was the cabin of a good friend of 
mine, a Mrs. Grant, whose daughter, Maggie, 
I had just enrolled. I asked Mrs. Grant what 
Holcomb was following me for; with some 
reluctance she told me that he was trying to 
persuade her not to send Maggie to my Mis- 
sion Sunday School. She quoted him: "Mrs. 
Grant, I tell you it will be a mighty bad thing 
for you to send Maggie to that man's Sunday 
School. I ain't got nothin' particular agin 
him, but he is them restycrats' (aristocrats') 
preacher, and all them people is down on poor 



ANNI8T0N EPISODES 53 



folks; take my word for it, that Sunday School 
is a trap; there is sure some ketch in it." 

In spite of the old man's counter influence 
Maggie came to the Sunday School, and two 
years afterwards, was confirmed. I tried to 
win Holcomb's friendship but never succeeded. 

Among the children I secured for the first 
Sunday was Lucy Mulford, who supported her 
semi-invalid mother; her father was serving a 
term in the penitentiary. The mother could 
not read a word, and Lucy could read but 
little; all the education she had having been 
secured by attendance at a country school 
during two winter sessions. 

The mother had some crude notions of 
religion, such as might be expected in a woman 
of her limited intelligence and opportunities. 
Lucy was a spiritual blank, but not a bad 
child. She was about fifteen years old, and 
her ignorance of the elementary principles of 
the Christian religion is incredible. I am 
sure that my grandchild when three years old 
was far better informed on the subject. I 
placed Lucy in the Sunday School class of one 
of the lovely Christian women who had con- 
sented to help me in the Mission ; one of those 
wise, tender-hearted, spiritually minded crea- 
tures whose womanhood is an incarnate poem. 

From the first, Lucy was an earnest 
pupil; attentive, but soon wearied by the strain 
of attention. She seemed to be eager to learn, 
but at first her memory was not retentive. 



54 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



I think the feebleness of her mental grasp was 
largely attributable to an ill-nourished body. 
I wish our writers on pedagogy would carefully 
study the subject of mal-nutrition ; I am sure 
it is a larger factor in the backwardness of 
some pupils than many teachers are aware of. 
Lucy's aptitude to learn certainly increased 
with the improvement of her physical health; 
though, indeed, she never became robust. 

After six months of Sunday School in- 
struction and home reading she began to 
improve quite noticeably. Her spiritual de- 
velopment was even more rapid than her 
mental growth. At the end of the year her 
teacher considered her prepared to enter my 
Confirmation class, to which, accordingly, she 
was admitted. The child's hunger for en- 
lightenment was pathetic and wonderful. 

When the Bishop came Lucy was con- 
firmed, and the following Sunday she was 
admitted to the Holy Communion. 

The girl continued to grow steadily in 
every grace of Christian womanhood; she 
brought her mother to a reasonable faith, and 
wrote her father regularly, trying to bring 
him under the blessed influence that so 
enriched her own soul. Her influence amongst 
her companions was most beautiful. She was 
a missionary without knowing it. 

About two years after I first knew her 
she was taken violently ill with pneumonia. 
Dr. Huger attended her most faithfully, and 



ANNI8T0N EPISODES 



55 



several of the lovely ladies of the parish visited 
her frequently, taking her comforts and deli- 
cacies. Her mother nursed her tenderly until 
she, too, was taken ill with the same malady. 

Lucy constantly grew worse; watching 
the case closely, one day the doctor recog- 
nized the fatal symptoms, and told me that 
she could not recover. 

I told Lucy that the end was near, and 
assured her that the Saviour was waiting to 
receive her. She smiled, gasped, and tried to 
utter some words. 

The mother's bed was drawn close to 
Lucy's, and she held one hand of the dying 
girl, whilst I held the other. 

It was all unspeakably pathetic, and it 
was a most precious pastoral experience. 

"Praise God from whom all blessings 
flow." 



56 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



XII. 

A HAUNTED HOUSE. 

My children, and other young people, 
have often begged me to tell them ghost 
stories. I give this one for what it is worth. 

Once in midsummer, I was invited to 
"exchange" with a brother clergyman whose 
parish was a short distance from mine. His 
family was away from home, and so I was 
entertained by a parishioner of his, a wealthy 
highly cultivated old bachelor, who lived alone 
in a most elegant mansion. 

After a sumptuous supper Sunday night, 
my host entertained me delightfully in his 
splendid library. While talking of home 
architecture and the foolish waste of money 
on false splendor that one often sees, my host 
said, "If you will excuse the impropriety of 
the question, I should like to ask you, just for 
fun, what you suppose I paid for this house 
and grounds." I made a rapid appraisement 
and ventured the figure, $20,000.00. "You 
are away off," said he, "guess again." I came 
down to $15,000.00. "Still too high," said my 
host, with a curious smile, "but I am not giv- 
ing you a fair chance. The house was thought 
to be haunted." "Well," I replied, "so strong 
is that silly superstition that I suppose the 
foolish owner sold it for $10,000.00." Still too 
high," said my host. "Give it up," said I, 



A HAUNTED HOUSE 



57 



"unless the right answer is that the owner 
paid you to take it off his hands." "No," 
replied my host, "not quite that. I paid 
$6,000.00 for it." And then he told me that 
the owner being obliged to remove to a distant 
city, tried to sell the house for something like 
its cost, then tried to rent it out for a nominal 
rental, but all in vain; and at last, sold it to 
my host for the sum just mentioned. It was 
the most striking proof I had ever known of the 
power of superstition. 

I asked my host what the character of the 
"haunting" was; and he told me that in the 
finest bedroom in the house, there was some- 
times a peculiar sound at night like deep 
sighing. He said he had slept in the room 
himself, but had never seen or heard the 
ghost. We both laughed at the imbecility of 
a belief in ghosts, and changed the subject. 

At bed time my host showed me to my 
room; playfully remarking as he ushered me 
into the beautifully furnished chamber, "This 
is the 'haunted room.' " I smiled, and re- 
plied, "Well, Major, if the ghost gets after me 
I shall call you." "All right," said he, "my 
room is right next to the library; but I don't 
think his ghostship will dare to disturb a min- 
ister; you know those uncanny fellows are 
afraid of sacred things." "Oh," said I, 
"whilst I don't classify myself amongst sacred 
things, I believe I have religion enough to 
whip any ghost that ever rattled a chain, or 



58 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



heaved a 'deep sigh.' " We then bade each 
other a pleasant good night. 

I need hardly say that I had no more 
belief in ghosts and haunted houses than in 
the "giants that Jack killed," but I am 
ashamed to say that I felt a little bit — just the 
least bit — nervous when my host withdrew. 
Not, of course, from any fear of the "hant," 
but because something queer happened in 
that room that some silly people were afraid of. 

I thought to myself: Of course, the so- 
called "deep sighing" has some rational cause: 
and yet, I thought, it will be unpleasant to 
hear it in the dark, just because I don't know 
exactly what it is. Then I thought what a 
childish idea! So, I said my prayers, extin- 
guished the light, and went to bed. 

I listened for the ghost-like sound for some 
time, wondering whether the natural sound, 
whatever it was, really would sound to me at 
all like sighing. 

I tried to reason out some theory of the 
real cause of the mysterious sound. I brought 
into requisition my school boy studies in 
pneumatics and accoustics; but I .could not 
settle upon a theory that would account for 
any nocturnal sound with any semblance of 
deep sighing. 

At that moment a creepy kind of sound 
did strike my expectant ear, and I said to my- 
self, "Ah, there it is!" But in a few seconds I 
recognized the creaking of the hinges of the 



A HAUNTED HOUSE 59 



hall door, as it was half closed by the breeze 
that was blowing through the room from an 
open window; but that sound did not bear the 
least resemblance to sighing. 

Changing my position in bed produced a 
slight "ping" of the springs, but no one could 
possibly mistake that for ghostly sighing. 

The next moment there was indeed a very 
peculiar sound, like sterterous breathing, that 
an imaginative person might easily call deep 
sighing. I raised myself on my elbow and 
braced my nerves! I knew it was not a ghost ! 
Of course I did! Bah! Thought I, "There are 
no ghosts, and this one can't scare me," 
(nervous logic). All the same I kept listening 
for the deep sighing to return, and it did\ 
Yes, it camel It sounded like an unhappy 
spirit that could not find repose. I leaped 
from the bed and turned on the light to 
investigate the ghostly sound, and found that 
it was only the sawing of the edge of the window 
shade as the wind blew it against the window 
frame. 

And then I laughed at myself, and men- 
tally admitted that I was, for a second, almost 
frightened. After ruminating for awhile on 
the psychology of superstition, I fell asleep, 
and when I awoke the blessed sun was shining 
in my window; and I marked down, one 
ghost story tried and found wanting. 



60 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



XIII. 

A REMARKABLE CONVERSION. 

One very warm summer after an 
unusually taxing year's work, I took my 
vacation in the Northwest, selecting for my 
rest a little mountain city that bore a 
reputation for exceptional salubrity and a 
low summer temperature. 

The air certainly was comparatively 
bracing, though the days were quite hot from 
ten in the morning until five in the evening. 
The nights however were nearly always cool, 
and with no necessity for much exertion during 
the day and good refreshing sleep at night 
the region fairly well sustained its reputation. 

I made the acquaintance of the worthy 
old rector the day after my arrival and found 
him very companionable. We met frequent- 
ly either at the rectory or my hotel and 
found that we had much in common. 
One subject that interested us both was 
the improvement of city governments. He 
told me of the efforts of a few earnest citizens 
to reform the very faulty administration of 
the civic affairs of the "Ideal City" as the 
inhabitants of the ambitious town called it. 

If I were writing an essay on municipal 
government I should certainly use the 
valuable material afforded me by the history 



A REMARKABLE CONVERSION 61 



of this little city, recording its passage from 
a "Slow Coach" government of fair efficiency 
and exceptional healthfulness at a cost of a tax 
of one half of one per cent on the hundred 
dollars to a "highly organized" government 
of extravagant investments in socalled "public 
utilities" at the cost of an enormous debt and 
a tax of one and three fourths per cent on 
the hundred dollars. Not that I am opposed to 
modern methods; far from it, when they can 
be kept free from incompetence, and graft. 

This little city offered a striking example 
of the proverbial "long suffering of English- 
speaking democracies" and the immeasurable 
rapacity of civic vultures who thrive on the 
apathy of respectable citizens. 

But my story is concerned with municipal 
misgovernment only so far as it produced a 
curious problem in the psycology and ethics 
of Conversion. 

The old rector told me that after many 
years of more or less adroitly concealed graft 
by which the Mayor and two of the four 
aldermen of the Ideal City became immensely 
rich they put a cap on the monument of their 
plunder by putting through a scheme for the 
city to issue bonds for the purchase of the 
Chautauqua plant that had, for several years 
been the "pride of the city." 

The Chautauqua plant had been built 
by a few monied men to attract summer 
visitors and enliven business during the dull 



62 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



season, with a view also to direct returns on 
the investment. 

The enterprise had paid good dividends 
for a few years, but the multiplication of 
Summer Schools and other devices to attract 
visitors in neighboring towns had reduced the 
patronage of the Chautauqua until there was 
a regular annual deficit. 

The owners of the " White Elephant" 
conceived the scheme of unloading the un- 
profitable animal on the Ideal city. 

The city authorities agreed to take the 
junk off the hands of the owners at cost, 
notwithstanding the fact that the owners 
had tried unsuccessfully to sell the property 
to a lumber company for one fourth that sum. 

The charter of the city allowed the issue 
of bonds for civic improvement upon the 
approval of a majority not of the registered 
voters — but of the votes cast at the election. 

Thirty per cent of the registered voters 
favored the measure and twenty per cent of 
them opposed it at the polls. Fifty per 
cent of the amiable citizens therefore did 
not take the trouble to vote, but many of 
them afterwards inveighed loudly against 
"the bare faced fraud." 

Well I must hurry on to my story. 

During my visit to the Ideal City a noted 
Evangelist was invited by all the pastors of 
the city to hold a series of revival services in 
the largest church edifice in the place. He 



A REMARKABLE CONVERSION 63 



was not of the sensational type, but a dig- 
nified and devout man who with all his zeal 
and eloquence never shocked the reverence 
of his large audiences. 

The rector and I attended the meetings 
(after the first) which seemed to grow in 
interest. The fifth night of the revival 
service, the Evangelist preached from the text 
— "Be sure your sin will find you out." 

It was an exceedingly clear and forceful 
description of the scar and stain of sin, of the 
sinner's inevitable realization of the wicked- 
ness and folly of offending God and of the 
precious value of the atoning love of the 
Saviour. 

The whole congregation seemed to be 
deeply moved. After the sermon the Evangelist 
in a quiet and very earnest tone begged any 
who knew they were sinners and wished God's 
forgiveness to come forward and declare their 
faith in God, and ask the church to pray for an 
increase of faith. 

A large number of drunkards, . gamblers, 
saloon-keepers and other reprobates professed 
conversion and went forward to the pulpit 
platform for the prayers of the church. The 
last suppliant to go forward was a man of 
apparently about fifty years of age, evidently 
a man of culture. I learned afterward that 
he was a capitalist of the highest respectability. 

His taking a place with the penitents 
evidently created surprise in the congregation. 



64 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



One lady particularly, who sat at a little 
distance from me seemed to be disturbed by 
the action of the last penitent. 

When he reached the platform he did not 
ascend it, but standing at the head of the 
middle aisle he said with a trembling voice — 

" Fellow men, I came forward to ask for 
your prayers," he paused, evidently overcome 
with powerful emotion. I noticed that he was 
very pale and kept closing and opening his 
hands. He looked like a man walking and 
talking in his sleep, but otherwise perfectly 
rational. 

Presently he seemed to brace himself with 
a great effort, and repeated, "I came forward 
to ask for your prayers — and your forgive- 
ness." Again his voice faltered, but in a few 
seconds he went on, "I hope I have truly 
repented of my sins. God knows I crave His 
forgiveness — and yours." 

The lady whose agitation I had noticed 
now became visibly very anxious and nervous. 

The penitent went on, "I fear God will not 
forgive me until I confess my sins in public, 
that is, my sin that concerns the public. So 
far as I can remember only one of my many 
sins does concern the community. As many 
of you know, I was a stockholder in the Chau- 
tauqua plant. I instigated the sale of it 
to the city because it became a poor invest- 
ment. 



A REMARKABLE CONVERSION 65 



"I was ostensibly paid par value for my 
stock which was not worth twenty-five cents 
on the dollar. 

"I paid half the purchase price to effect 
the sale. I won't say to whom I paid the 
money for I have no right to implicate others, 
and I have nothing to say about what trades 
the other stockholders made. I am making 
no accusations. I am simply confessing to 
you, my fellow men, that I have wronged you 
and sinned against God. I am going to make 
restitution by paying into the city treasury 
all the city paid me for my stock. If the 
grand jury should indict me I am going to 
plead guilty and take the consequences." 

For the last minute or two the dis- 
tressed lady had been silently weeping and 
trying to stifle her sobs with her handkerchief. 
Just as the penitent ceased speaking she gave 
the most frightful shriek I ever heard from 
human lips. She rose to her feet and turned 
into the aisle as if to leave the church and 
fell prone on the floor. 

The penitent rushed to her (it was his 
wife), lifted the poor lady in his arms and 
carried her from the church to the parsonage 
next door. A number of friends accompanied 
them. 

To say that the confession produced a 
sensation is to express it but feebly; the pastor 
of the church burst into tears, the evangelist 
took him into his arms; several men groaned 



66 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



pitifully, one exclaimed, "My God, has the 
world come to an end!" Many ladies became 
hysterical. 

The evangelist tried to offer a prayer, 
but broke down with the effort and 
dismissed the congregation with a benediction 
in broken tones. 

My companion and I were almost over- 
come. We left the church arm in arm, too 
much disturbed for conversation. We walked 
to his door in silence, when he said, "My heart 
is too full to talk tonight," and I replied, "and 
mine." "Good night!" "Good night!" 

I was never so upset by an occurrence 
during Divine Service in all my life. I could 
not think clearly. I could only pray for 
that man and his family. 

The next day the city was seething with 
excitement over the capitalist's conversion 
and public confession of sin. There was a 
great variety of opinions on the subject. 
Some said he was a fool; some, that he was 
crazy; some, that "the Holy Spirit had 
'snatched him as a brand from the burning;' " 
some, that it was a Divine signal to the com- 
munity of the day "when the secrets of all, 
hearts shall be revealed," etc., etc., etc. 

The clergy and most of the religious peo- 
ple of the community showed the man the 
utmost sympathy and encouragement. 

A few days afterward the rector and I 
discussed the psychology and ethics of the 
remarkable conversion. 



A REMARKABLE CONVERSION 67 



He thought the exceptional occurrence 
was explicable upon the theory that the peni- 
tent man had not been hardened by habitual 
sin, that he had never been quite comfortable 
over the fraud of the Chautauqua sale, and 
compunctions of conscience had prepared the 
man's soul for the strong impression the im- 
passioned and spiritual preaching of the 
evangelist evidently made. 

I replied, "No doubt there was a smolder- 
ing spark of the Divine fire that was fanned 
into flame by the heart-searching presentation 
of the Gospel, and that I had no doubt of the 
reality of the conversion." 

The rector and I agreed that restitution 
is an essential part of repentance in such 
cases; but I thought that could have been 
done by an anonymous gift to the city, and 
that his public disclosure of the sin was not 
necessary to the acceptance of his repentence; 
that the man had no right to bring the dis- 
grace and unhappiness to his family that his 
public confession produced. 

The rector contended that the public con- 
fession of the sin was an essential part of the 
repentance, and that the humiliation of the 
penitent's family was just an instance of the 
mystery of vicarious suffering which runs all 
through life. 

I believed then and I still believe that the 
penitent's branding his family with the dis- 
grace of his sin was an unnecessary cruelty. 



68 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



While the rector and I were discussing 
the question another city pastor came in. We 
told him of the subject under debate, and he 
said that he agreed with me that the public 
confession of the specific sin was not a neces- 
sary part of a genuine repentance, and was not 
necessary in order to make restitution. He 
went on to say that he thought the suffering 
that the man inflicted on his innocent family 
by the public disclosure of his crime indicated 
a morbid condition of mind that amounted 
to temporary insanity, and that he was appre- 
hensive of a frightful reaction when the man 
recovered a normal condition of mind and 
realized the dreadful injury he had needlessly 
done his family. 

The reader will naturally wish to know 
the sequel of the graft part of the story. 

The penitent capitalist, the other Chau- 
tauqua stockholders, the mayor, the aldermen, 
and the city clerk were all indicted for de- 
frauding the city. 

At the trial the city clerk turned state's 
evidence and testified that there had been 
extensive graft in all the investments of the 
city in public utilities. 

He was asked by the attorney for the 
mayor and aldermen whether he "shared in 
the graft," and he answered, "a mighty small 
share." The lawyer then asked him whether 
"the smallness of his share of the graft didn't 
make him mad." He replied, "It sure did." 



A REMARKABLE CONVERSION 69 



The two aldermen who voted against 
the purchase of the Chautauqua plant were 
acquitted, and all the rest of the defendants 
were convicted. The capitalist and the other 
Chautauqua stockholders were each fined 
$1,000.00; the mayor and two of the aldermen 
were sent to the penitentiary for two years, 
and the city clerk was fined $100.00. The 
convicted officials were removed from office 
by the decree of the court. 

After I returned home the old rector 
wrote me that at the next city election a very 
full vote was cast and good officers were 
elected. 

He also told me that when the next 
legislature met the city charter was amended 
so as to require a majority of the registered 
voters to approve of the issue of bonds for 
municipal utilities. 



70 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



XIV. 

VIEWS OF A FRENCH PROTESTANT. 

During a long railroad journey one sum- 
mer I found the most companionable person 
on the luxurious observation car was a French 
gentleman whom I shall call Mr. Edouard 
Grenet. 

He was a highly educated man and 
remarkably well informed on the current 
affairs of Europe; and he had been a close 
student of the political and religious life of 
this country. 

He thought De Toqueville was the great- 
est publicist of the nineteenth century, 
and often quoted from his "Democracy in 
America." 

As my companion was a professor of the 
French language and literature in an Ameri- 
can college, I supposed French and American 
literature would be the most interesting topics 
for our railroad conversation; but I was glad 
he took more interest in comparing the relig- 
ious status of the two countries. 

I was very desirous of learning from such a 
reliable source all I could of ecclesiastical 
affairs in France, and also to have an intelli- 
gent foreigner's views on the present aspect 
of religion in America. 

Professor Grenet was a member of the 
Reformed Church of France. I asked him 
how he could account for the apparent sterility 



VIEWS OF A FRENCH PROTESTANT 71 



of French Protestantism as compared with the 
growth and strength of the Protestant cause 
in Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and Scandinavian 
countries. 

He replied that measured by spiritual 
power the Protestantism of France was supe- 
rior to that of Germany and Denmark, and 
immeasurably stronger in every way than 
the Protestantism of Austria; although he 
admitted that the reform movement had 
never taken hold of the people in France as it 
had in England, Scotland, Sweden, and Nor- 
way. He thought the comparative weakness 
of Protestantism in France was chiefly at- 
tributable to the intellectual strength of 
atheism in that country, which was incom- 
parably greater than it had ever been in the 
other countries of Europe; that Voltaire alone 
had done more to turn the anti-papal revolt 
into infidelity than all the shallow sophists 
of Great Britain, Germany, and the Scandi- 
navian countries. 

I asked him about "Gallicanism." He 
said, "Ecclesiastically it is dead, but as a 
latent sentiment of patriotic opposition to 
Vaticanism it is still a power ; a few bishops, 
many of the parish priests and a majority of 
the Roman Catholic laity of France sympa- 
thize with the Republic's war on the political 
intrigues of the Jesuits. 

I asked the Professor why it was that the 
"Old Catholic" movement had made such 



72 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



little headway in France, and he said he 
thought the reason was that Dr. Dollinger, 
with all his learning and piety, had paralyzed 
the movement by traditionalism; that a half- 
way emancipation of the human soul did not 
appeal to Frenchmen. He said the "Mod- 
ernist" cult was strong among French Roman- 
ists, but he feared it was tainted with skepti- 
cism, and lacked leadership and organization. 

The Professor went on to give me a long 
and (to me) most interesting account of the 
Protestant Churches in France, but I am 
afraid that part of his discourse would not inter- 
est many of my readers. I am sure, however, 
that most of them will be glad to read a French 
thinker's opinion of the religious situation in 
the United States. I had some difficulty in 
eliciting his opinions on that subject as he 
said it seemed presumptuous for a stranger 
to express his views on such a difficult subject 
after only eight years' observation and 
reflection. 

I told him he need have no fears on that 
score after a distinguished ecclesiastic from 
Italy told us all about our religious condition 
after eight weeks' glance at the surface of 
things. 

"Well," said he, "if you will have my 
half-baked opinions, you must feel at liberty 
to combat them. They will at least have the 
value of detachment." 



VIEWS OF A FRENCH PROTESTANT 73 



I asked the professor how the attitude of 
the Church of Rome in this country differed 
from its relation to European countries. 

"That," said he, "is a large and multifa- 
rious question; for while, in some respects the 
relation of the Church of Rome to the civil 
government is the same in all countries, yet 
the policy of the Vatican in dealing with 
secular power is different in every country, 
and the ethical tone of Roman Catholicism 
is not the same in any two countries; for 
example, its unwritten code of morality in 
the United States and in South America is 
very different indeed." 

"Well," said I, "to narrow the question 
very much, what seems to you to be the chief 
menace of the Church of Rome to the welfare 
of the American people?" 

"I can answer that question unequivocal- 
ly: her hostility to your public school system, 
and that danger would be negligible but for a 
great political evil. The influence of the 
public school system itself, a free press, and 
the power of Protestantism would render the 
Romanist enmity to the public schools nuga- 
tory but for the evil influence of the corrupt 
politician. The demagogue is ready at all 
times to betray the people by trading the 
votes he can control for a price. 

"If Americans are vigilant enough to guard 
against the treason of the demagogue they 
have nothing to fear from Romanism; for time 



74 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



and the progress of enlightenment are against 
it." The Prcfessor went on to say: "I don't 
wish you to interpret my remark about the 
hostility of the Church of Rome to your pub- 
lic school system as implying conscious dis- 
loyalty to the country on the part of all 
Roman Catholics. I believe at least two 
bishops, many priests, and tens of thousands 
of Roman Catholic laymen are at heart patri- 
otic Americans. Many Romanists who sup- 
port their Church's insidious war on the free 
schools of the country are deceived by the 
sophistry and duplicity of leaders who are 
thoroughly disloyal to the country." 

I asked my companion "How he was im- 
pressed with the character and influence of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in this 
country." He answered me very promptly, 
"Its influence in the country has been out of 
all ratio to its numerical strength. While 
full of missionary zeal and animated by a 
splendid passion for social service, it is con- 
stitutionally conservative. The Episcopal 
Church in the United States realizes more 
than any other church in the world, Cavour's 
ideal of a 'free church in a free state.' 

"Only one danger menaces the vitality 
and future influence of your Church, and 
that is the toleration of error. 

"A large majority of your clergy and 
laity are orthodox, but an active and growing 
minority are Christian only in name. 



VIEWS OF A FRENCH PROTESTANT 75 



"The old leaders of the Broad Church 
party have a reputation for profound learning, 
and that gives a certain prestige to extreme 
men who have no real claim to scholarship. 
Their vagaries on the 'Higher Criticism' are 
positively amusing to a man who has gone 
through that pretentious cult, but the glitter 
of the fool's gold bewilders shallow divinity 
students. The tolerance of your Church is at 
once its strength and its weakness. The 
toleration of differences of opinion on all un- 
essential matters is a note of a truly living 
Church, but the connivance at rank heresy 
is suicidal to a church built, as yours is, 
on Bible truth. 

"Unless your General Convention meets 
this treason to her creeds very soon, she will 
split into two, perhaps three, fragments, or 
else decay." 

I asked Professor Grenet's opinion of the 
vitality and future of the other religious com- 
munions of this country. He replied: 

"I think the outlook of some of them is 
most hopeful, and some of them are doomed to 
extinction — as Christian Churches, simply 
because they are not Christian. 

"The Methodist, — the greatest of the 
non-Episcopal Churches, — is essentially a 
pioneer, the Church of the proletariat, 
but its leaders have the wisdom to give their 
Church the habiliments of culture as its mem- 
bership rises in the social scale. The only 



76 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



danger threatening that church is the possibil- 
ity of its losing its primitive vigor from too 
much respectability." 

I remarked, "The Presbyterian Church 
has lived a long time with a great deal of 
respectability;" and the Professor replied, 
"Yes, it was born in respectability, and has 
lived for three centuries on the earnestness 
with which it has held the doctrine of Pre- 
destination; but its ablest men have recently 
renounced Christian fatalism; and it is now a 
question whether a Church can flourish with- 
out a positive and distinctive creed. The 
only hope for the Presbyterians is a union 
with the Episcopalians." 

"Well, Professor, the Congregationalists 
have never been much handicapped with Cal- 
vinism." 

He replied, "No, they have not; but they 
have lacked unity of organization ; and Ameri- 
can Congregationalists lost their slogan, 
'Down with State Prelacy!' when the colo- 
nies became an independent country, with 
no connection of Church and State. 

"Congregationalism mostly runs to ethics 
and literature, but de mortuis nil nisi bonum." 

And I replied, " Requiescat in pace." 

I asked the Professor his opinion of the 
prospects of the Baptist Church. 

He said, "Its future is problematical. Its 
strength has lain in its honesty and consistency, 
but now its leading men no longer teach close 



VIEWS OF A FRENCH PROTESTANT 77 



communion, and its thinkers have given up 
the dogma that immersion is necessary to sal- 
vation. Of course, its scholars never did use 
the childish interpretation of the Scriptures 
upon which the backwoods preachers relied 
in their contention that immersion is the 
only valid form of Baptism. The Disciples 
(or "Campbellites," as some call them) 
are suffering still more from the lack of a 
definite creed. That Church has been a 
'catch-all' for unconverted Christians, though 
many of its members are converted dis- 
ciples indeed. If a Campbellite will only 
'go under the water,' and not have his baby 
baptized he may be a Swedenborgian, Chris- 
tian Scientist, Unitarian, or Irvingite, and his 
brethren will never disturb him. It is the 
least influential Church in the world in ratio 
to its number of members." 

"Professor, I think I can guess your 
opinion of Unitarianism from what you have 
already said." 

"I dare say you may. The Unitarian 
Society, as a Church, is destitute of a faith, 
though many of the members are good, pious 
people. 

"As a natural reaction against hyper- 
Calvinism it had quite a vogue, but as there is 
no longer any Calvinism in the world, the 
Unitarian Church has no raison d'etre except 
as a set of respectable clubs of skeptics." 



78 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



I asked Professor Grenet's opinion of the 
status of the Lutheran Church, and he replied, 

"Status is the word. That Church is 
marking time. Its stagnation is the conse- 
quence of the German people having aban- 
doned the Christian Religion. Their * Kultur' 
is the conquest of the world by Germany; and 
so far as they are capable of worship they 
worship the Kaiser, not because William II 
is a great man, but because he is the Head of 
the Empire. If the German people ever 
recover from that terrible obsession the Lu- 
theran Church may become a great spiritual 
power, for its faith is built on the Rock. 

Professor please tell me what you think 
of Christain Science'. "I can do that in a 
very few words. It is a sociological epidemic, 
just as the Salem Witchcraft was. It is 
a psychological disease, and it will pass 
away in a few years without leaving a trace 
of its influence." 

As we were nearing the point in our 
journey where we were to part, I said, — 

"Professor, if we have time before we 
reach your station, I should like to have your 
opinion of Revivalism in this country." 

He said, "I should need more than fifteen 
minutes to do justice to such a large subject, 
but I can give you a thought or two in a few 
words: 

"Evangelism of the Moody type illus- 
trates the power of the pure gospel even with- 



VIEWS OF A FRENCH PROTESTANT 79 



out an ordained ministry; and the Bill Sunday 
type proves the power of even a fragment of 
the gospel, when preached with great earn- 
estness, in spite of unconscious irreverence, 
ignorance of theology, and brutality of 
language." 

In bidding Professor Grenet goodbye, I 
told him that our conversation had been very 
delightful and profitable to me, and I sin- 
cerely hoped that we should, at some time 
in the near future, meet again. 

Perhaps I ought to add that I do not 
agree with Professor Grenet in all his opinions 
above expressed ; but it would make the chapter 
too long to state my dissent from them. 



80 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



xv. 

LITTLE ROCK MEMORIES. 

If I were writing a history of my ministry, 
I should devote a large part of it to my eight 
years' rectorship of Christ Church, Little 
Rock, Arkansas. 

If I can appraise my own work it was the 
most eventful and fruitful part of my minis- 
try; but as my life's work has not been of 
sufficient interest to justify the publication of 
its history I have written this book of 
reminisences; and I shall confine the record 
of my Little Rock experiences to a few odd 
happenings. 

Still I cannot refrain from leaving on 
record an expression of my profound apprecia- 
tion of the character of the men and women of 
that parish. In a time that ' 'tried men's 
souls" and called for heroes and heroines, they 
were loyal to their pastor, true to their Church 
and faithful to God; and God has poured out 
blessings upon them abundantly. 

.It would offend the fine womanhood of 
the ladies of Christ Church if I were to name 
them individually in my praise of their piety 
and devotion. Many of that glorious band, 
"the matron and the maid," have gone to their 
reward, a reward that awaits their survivors. 
* Of the men I could give a splendid list of 
Christian knights, living and dead, sans peur 



LITTLE EOCK MEMORIES 81 



et sans reproche. If, for lack of space, I shall 
mention only two, I think all will approve of 
the pre-eminence that I give them: John D. 
Adams and Richard H. Parham. 

Major Parham is still living and his 
modesty forbids me now to dwell upon his 
virtues. In his old age he is enjoying the 
sweet contemplation of a well spent life; and 
I am sure that he is looking with full assurance 
for a glorious immortality. 

Words fail me when I try to write a 
eulogy upon the character of Major Adams, 
facile princeps amongst a hundred splendid 
gentlemen. For courage, generosity, tender- 
ness of heart, loyalty to friends, guilelessness 
of soul and humility before God, I have never 
known his equal. I loved him with an affec- 
tion unutterable and undying. 

If my gifted friend, Mrs. Ellen H. 
Cantrell, had not written the "Annals of 
Christ Church Parish/' I should long ago have 
undertaken the pleasant task; but my effort 
would have fallen far short of her beautiful 
and judicious history. In this little book I 
shall content myself with the narration of a 
few pastoral experiences, which, in the nature 
of things, no one else could write. 

If these pages should ever be read by 
those personally concerned, I have to remind 
them of that precious promise of God, "Be 
thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee 
a crown of life." 



82 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



I shall not mention the strangest and most 
tragical incident, for two reasons: First it is 
too strange to be believed by those who know 
nothing of the facts, and, second, a few living 
persons might possibly recognize some of the 
very peculiar circumstances, and thus identify 
the dramatis personae. 

The first memory that I shall record 
I will call 

HARD LINES. 

One day a man came to me for help, but 
not alms. He only wanted advice, though I 
found that he needed money also. A few 
weeks previously he had been discharged from 
the penitentiary of a neighboring State, where 
he had served a term for a felony. He admitted 
his guilt and offered no extenuation of his 
crime. He had a certificate of the prison 
warden, commending him for good conduct 
during his entire term of imprisonment, which 
had been shortened for good behaviour, and a 
letter from a clergyman testifying to the man's 
"profession of religion," and expressing a be- 
lief in the genuineness of his conversion. 

The man told me that although he was an 
experienced clerk and had learned a trade in 
prison he found it impossible to secure work. 
He said that in several instances where work- 
men were advertised for he had applied for 
the place; and, in every case, when he told the 
employer that he was an ex-convict, he was 



LITTLE BOCK MEMORIES 83 



refused work. "Now," said the man, "what 
am I to do? It seems that I must either beg, 
lie, or steal. I believe I could get work within 
twenty-four hours if I would say nothing about 
my crime and imprisonment, and when asked 
about my last job, would tell some plausible 
falsehood." No doubt this man's plight is 
that of many others. 

It seems to me that the situation is one 
that calls for some organized system of pro- 
viding work for ex-convicts who want to do 
right. Human society is surely at fault when 
a reformed criminal is obliged to beg, steal, 
lie or starve. 

A WOULD-BE SUICIDE. 

One rainy Sunday night, after service, as I 
was leaving the church I met a man just 
inside the front door, evidently waiting to 
speak to me. The sexton had extinguished 
all the lights but one; and by the dim light I 
at first mistook the man for a begger, no 
uncommon visitor after Sunday night service; 
but I soon saw that I was mistaken. When 
I drew nearer to the man I saw that his 
countenance was indescribably sad, almost 
desperate. Withal it was a handsome and 
intelligent face. 

I accosted him with a pleasant, "Good 
evening." He did not return the salutation; 
evidently not from rudeness, but from pre- 
occupation of mind. 



84 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



In a few seconds he roused himself from 
his reverie and said: "Can you spare me a 
few minutes for a talk with you?" I replied: 
"Yes indeed, all the time you want; won't you 
come into the rectory next door ?" He replied : 
"No, thank you, I will talk to you right here, 
if you please." I dismissed the sexton and 
invited my visitor to take a seat, which he did 
in the rear pew. I sat down beside him and 
said: "I see that you are troubled, what can 
I do for you?" He replied: "I am too 
wretched to live, may I burden you with my 
trouble?" "Certainly, "I said, "that is my 
office, to try to help people bear burdens." 
And then he told me that he was separated 
from his wife, who was living in a distant city; 
that he had no hope of a reconciliation, and 
that his life was a burden. He said: "I was 
on my way to the river to drown myself; I 
saw the light in the church, and dropped in 
for a minute just to say my last prayer. I 
thought, may be, I could pray better in church 
than on the river bank. Just as I took this 
back seat, in your sermon you said: 'God 
never allows any man to live one minute 
without a loving purpose that his life shall be 
a blessing to himself and others.' And I 
wondered whether that could possibly be true 
of my miserable life, and so I waited to see 
you and ask about it." 

I talked with the man a long time and 
prayed with him. He told me his sad story; 



LITTLE ROCK MEMORIES 85 



there was, as usual, fault on both sides; but 
I cannot give the details for fear of disclosing 
the identity of the person; for it was quite out 
of the common path of human folly and 
weakness. I dwelt upon the wickedness and 
cowardice of suicide. (He seemed to be more 
impressed by what I said about the cowardice 
than the wickedness of it.) 

I urged him to seek a reconciliation with 
his wife (though I had but little hope of it) 
and in any event to turn his thoughts away 
from his own unhappiness and try to make 
others happy. He asked me how he could do 
that; and I told him to try to find some man 
more wretched than himself, and be a friend 
to him; and he asked: "Could any man be 
more miserable than I?" "Oh, yes indeed", 
I replied, "a man whose wife has sacrificed her 
virtue must be much more unhappy than you.' 
"That is a fact", he said, "that would be 
a worse case than mine. Do you know 
such a case?" "No," I said, "I do not know 
of such a case amongst the living, but years 
ago I knew a man whose home was blighted 
in that way. He was the unhappiest man I 
ever knew; and yet that man never talked of 
suicide; but lived a lonely life of devoted piety 
and usefulness, until God called him to his 
rest." 

My visitor seemed to be strengthened 
and comforted. He assured me that he had 
abandoned all thought of taking his own life, 



86 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



that he would again seek a reconciliation with 
his wife, and try to live a life of self-sacrifice. 
He grasped my hand warmly, thanked me for 
the help I had given him, and bade me good 
bye. 

Although I was very tired, I did not 
sleep much that night. 

A PERPLEXING MARRIAGE. 

One day I received a note from a lady 
stopping at one of our hotels. The compo- 
sition bore all the marks of good breeding and 
sincerity: It asked me to call at my earliest 
convenience. I called promptly. She 
received me in her private parlor. She was 
evidently a lady, in the best sense of the word, 
and a highly intelligent one. 

She said to me: "Mr. C. I was con- 
firmed in the Episcopal Church a few years 
ago, though, I am ashamed to say, I have not 
attended service very regularly of late. I 
have felt unsettled and so miserable. My 
husband who is a travelling man is a member 
of no Church, but the best man I ever knew. 
He had married and been divorced before I 
met him. I should never have known any of 
the particulars but for his frank disclosure of 
his sad experience. His former wife must 
have been a monster in everything except in 
regard to the Seventh Commandment. 

After several years of unspeakable misery 
my husband, as I said, was divorced. Al- 



LITTLE ROCK MEMORIES 87 



though he alone had cause for divorce he 
chivalrously allowed her to bring the suit and 
obtain the divorce from him. I did not know 
until recently that our Church forbids the 
marriage of such divorced persons; nor did 
my husband know of that law of the Church. 
The clergyman who married us had known us 
but for a short time, knew nothing of my 
husband's first marriage, and asked us no 
question on that subject; and we told him 
nothing about it, because we did not know of 
the law of the Church. 

Now I know that my marriage to my 
husband was not lawful, and yet — and yet — 
and yet my husband and I love each other 
very, very dearly. The thought of separation 
is heartbreaking. My husband will not hear 
to a divorce, if indeed one could be obtained 
on merely ecclesiastical grounds: What shall 
I do? Please tell me whether, as a Christian 
woman, I am bound to give up my husband?" 

I need hardly say that I was perplexed. 
The law of the Church was clear enough, but 
it seemed a terrible thing to separate a loving 
pair who had innocently contracted an un- 
lawful marriage. 

I asked the unhappy lady whether she 
had any children; she answered with deep 
feeling: "Thank God, No!" 

I told her I must have time to think over 
it and pray over it, before I could give her my 
opinion in the matter. After a week's prayer- 



88 ODD HAPPENINGS 

ful reflection my mind was made up. I felt 
that I must advise the unfortunate couple 
that they were not lawful husband and wife, 
and that it was their duty to separate. 

When I went to give, them my advice, 
they had gone away, and the hotel proprietor 
did not know where. They were in the parish 
only a few weeks, and had made no acquaint- 
ances. I never heard from them again and so 
I can only conjecture what they did with 
their distressing problem. 

From that day I have never married 
strangers without asking them whether either 
of them have ever been married before. In 
two cases, divorce was an impediment; but 
in both cases they easily found other ministers 
to perform the rite. Of course, they were not 
Episcopal ministers. 



XVI. 

"THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR." 

For my vacation one summer I took a 
fishing trip to one of the lake regions of 
Wisconsin, and there met an old friend whom 
I had not seen for many years: For obvious 
reasons I shall give him a fictitious name — 
Alexander McCulley — and similarly disguise 
the real names of all the persons and places 
mentioned in the narrative. 

After McCulley was tired of fishing 
(he was not a devout disciple of Isaac Walton), 
he begged me to visit him in his home. 

I accordingly spent several days in the 
enjoyment of his and his lovely wife's 
hospitality. 

Their home was in a picturesque village 
on the west side of a beautiful little sheet of 
water which I shall call Lake Foyle. 

McCulley was engaged in the copper 
mining business, and seemed to be quite 
prosperous. He was a well educated man, 
of good raising and sterling Christian 
character. 

His wife was a charming woman, of cul- 
tivated mind, gracious manners and unaf- 
fected piety. They had no children, but 
seemed to possess everything else to make a 
married couple happy. 

Whilst I was visiting the McCulleys I 
met his partner, a Mr. Thomas Frazier, who 



90 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



took supper with us one evening. He was a 
bachelor, a man of affable manners and a 
countenance that commanded my confidence. 

After some pleasant discourse on topics 
of general interest, I turned the conversation 
to copper mining, eager, as my habit was, to 
get any information at first hand. 

The only thing thus developed that had 
any bearing on this narrative was the dis- 
closure of the happy adaptation of the talents 
of each partner to the lacking of the other, 
and their consequent mutual dependence. 

Frazier was the practical miner and 
McCulley was the financier of the firm. 

McCulley remarked to me that the death 
of Frazier would ruin the business; and the 
latter responded, " McCulley 's death would 
most surely be fatal to it." 

The next evening I met another acquaint- 
ance of the McCulleys, a Mr. Emil Hoffman. 
He was the prosecuting attorney for that 
judicial district; quite a man of the world, 
but not a 1 'born gentleman." He lived in 
the county seat a few miles from the village 
and was, it seemed, a frequent caller at the 
McCulleys. I think music rather than innate 
congeniality was the bond of intimacy. Hoff- 
man had a remarkably fine voice and Mrs. 
McCulley was a gifted pianist. She always 
played Hoffman's accompaniments. McCul- 
ley neither played nor sang, but was a very 
appreciative listener. I enjoyed the concert 



"THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR" 91 



very much though most of the instrumental 
music was beyond my limited musical culture. 
They all politely laughed at me when I said 
I didn't like Wagner because he "was too 
noisy." 

After my visit to the McCulleys, I went 
over to the eastern side of Lake Foyle for the 
better fishing on that side. While camping 
out some miles from the summer visitors' 
hotel, I fell in with a company of Chicago 
teachers who were roughing it for their health. 
They brought me the distressing news that the 
day before they left the village Alexander 
McCulley had lost his life by drowning in 
Lake Foyle. 

I immediately broke camp and hired a 
fisherman to take me over to the village in his 
little boat. I went at once to see Mrs. 
McCulley. 

I found her prostrated with grief. After 
a brave effort to control her feelings she told 
me the circumstances of her husband's death. 

On the fatal day Mr. McCulley having 
a business appointment on the eastern side 
of Lake Foyle, had undertaken to go over in 
his little sail boat with his French Canadian 
servant as sailor — one Ruel Danton by name. 
Mr. McCulley not returning before sunset, 
as he expected, Mrs. McCulley became anxious 
and telephoned the man with whom her hus- 
band had the appointment and asked him 
whether Mr. McCulley had started home. 



92 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



He replied that Mr. McCulley had not been 
there that day. Now thoroughly alarmed, 
Mrs. McCulley asked Mr. Frazier to take 
some good sailors and go in search of her 
husband's boat. She now remembered that 
shortly after Mr. McCulley had started to 
cross the lake a sudden wind had sprung up, 
but Mr. Frazier had allayed her fears by 
telling her that the wind was not strong 
enough to endanger a boat with furled sails. 

The searchers found McCulley's boat up- 
side down near the middle of the lake. Danton 
was found in a fisherman's cabin on the east- 
ern shore of the lake in an exhausted condition. 

When he recovered from his prostration 
he said that a squall struck the boat and upset 
it before they could furl the sail; and that 
after trying in vain to right the boat they 
both started to swim for the eastern shore; 
that when he reached the shore Mr. McCulley 
was nowhere to be seen, and that unless he 
turned and swam for the western shore he 
must have been drowned. 

The next day upon dragging the middle 
of the shallow lake McCulley's body was 
found. There was a bruise on the side of the 
head as if it had struck the gunwale as the 
boat capsized; which seemed to explain the 
drowning, for McCulley was an exceptionally 
fine swimmer. 

I did all I could to comfort McCulley's 
widow; and had an interview with Frazier 



"TEE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR" 93 



about McCulley's estate. He told me that he 
intended to wind up the business as soon as 
he could without serious loss, and that Mrs. 
McCulley's share of the proceeds would 
afford her a comfortable support even with- 
out the life insurance that her husband had 
left her. 

After bidding Mrs. McCulley a sorrowful 
farewell I returned to my fishing on the other 
side of the lake. 



Several weeks afterwards the old keeper 
of the inn where I stopped when the weather 
was too inclement for comfortable camping 
out told me that a few days before a guest of 
his, a Mr. Janson, told him that he had just 
come from a lumber-camp in Canada where 
he had seen Mr. McCulley's French Canadian 
servant under peculiar circumstances; that he 
met him on the public road one evening about 
dusk, that he instantly recognized him and 
said, "Hallo, Ruel! What are you doing up 
here?" That Danton seemed frightened and 
did not reply, but slunk away into the woods. 
Janson had not then heard of McCulley's 
death, and thought nothing of Danton's 
strange behavior until afterwards. 

The next day Danton was taken violently 
ill with some fever and Janson went to see him. 
The moment he entered the sick man's room 
he shrieked out, "There he is! Give him the 



94 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



money! It is in my belt under the mattress! 
Catch him! Keep him off!" And then 
screamed again as if in great terror. 

As his presence seemed to excite the 
sick man, Janson withdrew. 

An Englishman who was nursing the 
patient afterward told Janson that Danton 
in his delirium repeatedly said that he killed 
a man and threw his body into Lake Foyle, 
that he was paid one hundred dollars for the 
job, and that the murdered man's ghost was 
after him. Danton did not mention the name 
of the man that he said he killed, nor the 
name of the person who had hired him to 
commit the crime. 

Janson spoke of it to the physician in 
charge of Danton's case; he told Janson that 
the patient was suffering from an attack of 
acute dementia partly attributed to hard 
drinking, that he thought he would recover 
and might never have another attack if he 
would stop drinking. 

The doctor made light of Danton's con- 
fession of crime and said that it was a common 
form of delirium in such cases. Janson said 
he dismissed the matter from his mind until 
returning to the inn he heard of McCulley's 
death, when he thought he would better men- 
tion the lumber-camp episode. He accord- 
ingly told the old inn-keeper, who, knowing 
that I had been a warm friend of McCulley's, 
told me. 



' ' THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 7 ' 95 



"It is a curious fact, said the old inn- 
keeper, "that Janson bears a striking resem- 
blance to McCulley, though he is a thinner 
man and has not as much color as McCulley 
had." 

I immediately went over to the village 
and told Frazier of Janson's story. 

He was deeply interested, but said he did 
not think Danton had killed McCulley; that 
he could have no motive but robbery or the 
hire of assassination; that McCulley was 
known never to carry any large sum of money 
on his person, and that he knew of no enemy 
of McCulley's who would want him killed; 
and if there were such a monster in the neigh- 
borhood, he would be insane to employ as 
stupid instrument as Danton. 

While I was asking Frazier about Dan- 
ton's habits, he seemed to be absent minded 
and instead, of answering my inquiry about 
Danton's character, he said, "While we have 
been talking about the possibility of some 
one hiring Danton to kill McCulley, a sus- 
picion has come into my mind. There is one 
man in this neighborhood who might imagine 
that he would be benefited by McCulley's 
death. I believe him to be an unprincipled 
man, but I don't believe he is bad enough to 
commit cold-blooded murder." 

I asked him who it was that he suspected, 
and he replied that his grounds for the sus- 
picion were too slight to justify him in men- 



96 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



tioning a name, but that he should employ 
a detective to probe the matter to the bottom. 

I then asked Frazier if he thought we 
would better consult Hoffman, and he said, 
"I have not much confidence in Hoffman, but 
as he represents the State I suppose it is our 
duty to tell him the Janson story;" which I 
agreed to do. 

When I rose to go, he said, "I shall not 
depend on Hoffman's detective, for he is a 
humbug if not a fraud." 

I then went to see Hoffman and told him 
what the inn-keeper had told me of Janson's 
story. 

He said, "Janson ought to have told me, 
and no one else, when he returned from Cana- 
da, for if there is anything in the tale except 
the raving of a delirious man Danton may 
hear of our suspicions and elude our pursuit. 
Whilst I don't think there is anything in it, 
I shall put a detective on Danton's track." 

I asked Hoffman whether McCulley had 
any enemy who was at all likely to wish him 
dead, and he replied, "Not that I know of, 
and I think I should know it if McCulley 
had an enemy. I was pretty intimate with 
him; being a bachelor and having no home 
of my own I enjoyed the McCulleys' hospi- 
tality very much, and I never heard him 
mention any one's hostility. At the same 
time a circumstance of recent occurrence 
might suggest to a cynical mind that one 



1 ' THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR ' ' 97 



person had a motive for wishing for McCul- 
ley's death. Do you know McCulley's part- 
ner?" I told him that I had met him. 
''Well, McCulley and Frazier a few weeks 
ago had their lives insured for each other for 
a very large sum; but, of course, to you and 
me it is unthinkable that a man like Frazier 
could be guilty of such a crime." 

I said, "I am sure he could not, and I can 
give a good reason for that mutual insurance; 
McCulley and Frazier both told me that the 
success of their business depended upon their 
mutual help, and that the death of either 
might bring financial disaster to the other. 
It was natural, therefore, that under those 
circumstances they should utilize life insur- 
ance for their mutual protection." 

"Yes, of course, that is the true explana- 
tion of it," said Hoffman. 

"Besides," said I, "aside from the moral 
impossibility of a man of Frazier's character 
murdering his partner for his life insurance, 
there is the enormous improbability that a 
man of Frazier's intelligence would employ an 
ignorant French Canadian to commit the 
crime; the instrument is too crude and 
dangerous." 

"Now, I don't agree with you there," 
said Hoffman. "Of course it is unbelievable 
that Frazier murdered his partner, but a man 
bad enough to hire an assassin to kill a man 
could scarcely do better than employ a French 



98 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



Canadian of the low class. They are very- 
subtle and secret and the hardest people in 
the world to wring a confession from, and they 
have a remarkable sense of loyalty to a 
particeps criminis. In all my experience as a 
prosecuting attorney, I have never succeeded 
in inducing a French Canadian defendant 
to turn State's evidence. For all that, I don't 
believe any one hired Danton to kill McCulley; 
if Danton did it he committed the crime of 
his own accord and for robbery or revenge. 
A French Canadian is as revengeful as an 
Indian; but I can't imagine any reason that 
Danton could have for revenge on McCulley. 
He was a very just man and peculiarly kind 
to his employees. Still we shall get after 
Danton and if he did kill McCulley, we shall 
get it out of him." 

Before leaving the lake country for my 
home, I went to bid Mrs. McCulley goodbye, 
and while on that side of the lake I called on 
Frazier and Hoffman to learn what progress 
they had made in their investigation of 
Danton's case. 

Hoffman told me that he sent a detective 
to the lumber-camp in Canada where Janson 
saw Danton, but could not track him any 
further with any certainty, but that hearing 
he had gone to Alaska he wrote the United 
States District Attorney there to put his 
detective on Danton's trail, but had not yet 
heard from him. 



"THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR" 99 



When I saw Frazier he told me that his 
detective had gone to the lumber-camp and 
found that Danton had left there shortly after 
his recovery from his illness, some said to 
Alaska, some said to Manitoba, and some said 
to Quebec, that the detective believed that the 
mention of Alaska and Manitoba was a blind 
and so he went on to Quebec in quest of him; 
there he learned that Danton had been in 
Quebec, but that he had gone north from 
there and that he was still searching for him. 
Frazier asked me to please not to mention to 
Hoffman anything about his search for Dan- 
ton. I thought it rather a queer request, 
but I agreed to comply with it. 



A few months after I returned home, 
Frazier wrote me that Hoffman had begun to 
call on Mrs. McCulley very frequently, that 
she discouraged his visits, that he was so 
persistent that she finally refused to see him; 
that Hoffman seemed to be so insanely in love 
with Mrs. McCulley that some of his intimate 
friends advised him that he was ruining what- 
ever chances he might have had for winning 
her by his premature courtship; that a lady 
of Mrs. McCulley's refinement must view 
with abhorrence the thought of receiving a 
lover's attentions so soon after her husband's 
death. 



100 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



Frazier went on to tell me, in his letter, 
that his detective finally found Danton in a 
camp on Lake St. John; he told Danton he 
knew he killed McCulley, that McCulley's 
ghost told him all about it; how that Danton 
struck him in the side of the head with the 
oar and then threw him into the lake, 
that he purposely upset the boat and then 
swam ashore; and that McCulley's ghost was 
coming after him that night to take him to 
purgatory. The detective told him that he 
knew who paid him a hundred dollars to com- 
mit the crime. Whereupon Danton con- 
fessed the whole thing, and told the detective 
that if he would keep McCulley's ghost away 
he would go back to Wisconsin and tell all 
about it. 

Frazier said that two days ago the detec- 
tive arrived with Danton, who made an affi- 
davit charging Hoffman with having hired 
him to kill McCulley just in the way the 
detective supposed he had done, that Hoffman 
was arrested and lodged in prison and com- 
mitted suicide that night. 

Danton was tried, convicted and sen- 
tenced to prison for life. 

Verily, ' 'The way of the transgressor 
is hard." 



XVII. 



ST. MARY'S HALL INCIDENTS. 

Some times I have been tempted to write 
a history of St. Mary's Hall, San Antonio, 
Texas, for the delectation of its present, future 
and former pupils. Indeed, during the twelve 
years that I was principal of that school I 
gathered from various sources some historical 
data of the times before my own. I am es- 
pecially indebted to Mr. James Dureya 
Stevenson for some precious mementoes of 
his sister's heroic work, and Bishop Elliott's 
forethought in establishing the school. I 
added to it my testimony in regard to Bishop 
Johnston's laborious care for the school. 

All that material I filed in the archives 
of the Alumnae Association, to await the 
vitalizing touch of some future historian of 
the school. 

I wish to record here a tribute to the 
memory of the first principal of St. Mary's 
Hall, Miss Philippa Stevenson. I have never 
known such an active mind, powerful will 
and consecrated spirit in so frail a body. The 
Alumnae of St. Mary's Hall did well to place 
a stained glass window in the chapel of the 
school to express their reverence for her 
memory. The subject is the woman's de- 
dication to the Saviour of the alabaster box 
of precious ointment, with this text of scrip- 



102 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



ture: "She hath done what she could." 
Eternity will reveal how much that was. 

I shall add to this slight tribute and to 
the chronicles I have deposited in the Archives 
of the Alumnae Association, a few episodes in 
my connection with the school. They may, 
perhaps, lend variety to the record. 



THE CYCLONE 

It was on the night of May 7th, 1900 
that the cyclone struck San Antonio. There 
was some damage done to many buildings in 
the city, but there was only one serious loss, 
the wrecking of the uncompleted San Antonio 
Loan and Trust Company's building. 

The cyclone was more terrifying than 
destructive to St. Mary's Hall. It struck us 
about midnight. The electric light wires were 
thrown down and thus our principal source of 
light was cut off. 

My sleeping apartment at that time was' 
on the first floor; I was awakened by the 
storm, and felt the impact of the wind as it 
struck the building. The next moment I 
heard a crash; and then a wild tumult of 
voices and shrieks of terror. Without waiting 
completely to dress, I hurriedly put on a bath 
robe and slippers and ran into the hall. 



ST. MARY'S HALL INCIDENTS 103 



A crowd of girls in all degrees of uncom- 
pleted toilet were rushing down the stairs in 
wild panic; amongst them a young lady 
teacher, holding a lighted candle in a trem- 
bling hand. She was trying most bravely to 
tranquilize the pupils, but her face and voice 
betrayed her own terror. 

Some of the pupils declared that the 
whole roof of the house was blown off; others 
screamed that the walls of the third story 
were blown in, and all the teachers and pupils 
on that floor killed: One young lady, and 
she a member of my class in logic, shouted 
vehemently: "We are all killed — every last 
one of us!" That wild exclamation gave me 
an opportunity to try a psycological diver- 
sion; and I remarked as calmly as I could. 
"Why, my child, you are the noisiest dead 
girl I ever saw in my life." 

By that time the rest of the teachers and 
the ladies of my family had joined in the 
whirlpool of excitement. 

I addressed the crowd in the steadiest 
voice I could command: "Ladies, if you will 
excuse my unconventional attire and come to 
the library, I will tell you all about it." Other 
candles were lighted, and I called the roll, so 
as to know where to look for any missing 
member of the household. They were all 
there and not one of them hurt. I offered up 
a prayer of thanksgiving, and went exploring. 



104 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



I found that two chimneys had been blown 
over, one clear into the yard and the other 
onto the roof, crashing through it, but not 
through the ceiling below. That was all the 
damage we suffered, not counting jarred 
nerves. 

Reading over what I have written above 
I think I may have made the impression on 
the reader that I boasted of my equanimity; 
so I will be frank, and confess that I was a 
little frightened. I will, however, say this 
in extenuation of my lack of tranquility, that 
the crashing of that chimney through the roof 
was the most awful sound I ever heard. 



THE TIME OF THE YELLOW FEVER. 

In October 1903, a few weeks after school 
opened, dengue was very prevalent in San 
Antonio. Indeed it amounted almost to an 
epidemic. None of our household were 
attacked. The yellow fever was epidemic in 
many places in Mexico, and several cases were 
under treatment in Laredo, Texas, about one 
hundred and fifty miles from San Antonio. 

I was in a very thankful frame of mind 
over the exemption of the school from all 
ailments; but my gladness was soon turned 
into anxiety, by the sudden illness of a lady 
teacher. Our excellent physician suspected 



ST. MARY'S HALL INCIDENTS 



105 



yellow fever, but before announcing his 
opinion called in consultation the State Health 
Officer, and also the physician in charge of 
the U. S. Marine Hospital in Galveston. 
These experts confirmed our doctor's diagnosis. 

Upon that indubitable information my 
first impulse was to send all the boarding 
pupils home, and excuse all the teachers; but 
the State Health Officer anticipating such 
action on my part forbade it, fearing that the 
pupils' returning home might spread the dis- 
ease all over Texas. After consulting the 
Bishop I submitted to the mandate of author- 
ity, but felt it to be my duty to tell the parents 
of my pupils the facts as I knew them, which 
I did very promptly. All but twelve of the 
boarding pupils were removed by their parents 
before the quarantine shut the city off from 
all contact with the outside world. Mean- 
while I had, of course, suspended the atten- 
dance of the day pupils. 

As soon as the doctors pronounced our 
case of illness yellow fever, I assembled the 
teachers in the library for a conference. Up 
to this time no one in the house except the 
matron and myself suspected that we had the 
dreaded malady under our roof, and so 
the teachers were wholly unprepared for my 
announcement. 

I broke it to them as tactfully as I could 
but it was like the explosion of a bomb shell 



106 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



in camp. Startled and alarmed as they nat- 
urally were, they behaved admirably. Al- 
though the situation was grave enough it was 
not without its amusing features. The 
youngest teacher, a young lady of exceedingly 
fine character, gave way to a burst of weeping, 
moved by her sympathy for her mother, 
whose anxiety she anticipated; I tried to 
comfort her and break the gloom that had 
settled down on all present; and when the 
emotional young teacher wailed, "Oh my 
mother! My poor dear mother!" I said to 
her "Why, my child, the yellow fever mos- 
quito can't possibly fly to the mountains of 
North Carolina" (where the mother lived). 
"I assure you that your dear mother is not in 
the least danger of the disease." I was re- 
lieved to see her smile through her tears. 
Another teacher, to prove that she was brave 
enough for pleasantry said "I don't mind 
anything about it so much as the stopping of 
our pay." "Oh", I assured her "your pay 
shall not stop, so we shall call this a holiday 
on full pay." Which produced a few more 
smiles. 

"Now", said I, "ladies, I want you all to 
act like major generals when I call the pupils 
in and tell them"; and they did. 

Of course I employed a special nurse for 
our patient, removed everyone else from the 
part of the building she occupied, and 
screened the doors and windows. 



ST. MARY'S HALL INCIDENTS 



107 



Our patient recovered, and no one else 
in the house took the disease. I think there 
can be no doubt that our case originated from 
the sting of a mosquito that had stung some 
one who contracted the disease in Mexico or 
Laredo and died in San Antonio without any 
one recognizing the disease. I think there is 
not the remotest danger of the malady ever 
appearing in San Antonio again. 

St. Marys' Hall has had an extraordinary 
health record. 

I am rejoiced to hear that the school has 
entered upon a new period of great prosperity 
and usefulness. As I am no longer connected 
with the school, I can say without immodesty 
that I believe it is one of the best schools for 
girls in the world. 



108 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



XVIII. 

SUICIDE OF THE SOUL. 

So much is being written nowadays on 
the subject of the super-normal and the sub- 
normal that I think I may as well offer my 
contribution to the symposium. 

The most sensational manifestation of the 
occult in our day is what is preposterously 
called Christian Science. I shall not under- 
take to expose the ignorance, bad logic and 
presumption of Eddyism; that has been well 
done by others, notably by the Rev. Dr. R. 
H. McKim, and by the famous Mark Twain. 
The harm that the cult has done to the bodies, 
minds and souls of its victims is appalling. 

Hypnotism is another fertile field that 
has been overworked. I shall not in this place 
try to sift the bushel of charlatanism from the 
grain of truth. The whole subject of sub- 
consciousness has been admirably treated by 
the late Professor William James, the Rev. 
Dr. Elwood Worcester and the distinguished 
Dr. DuBois of Switzerland. 

What I shall try to illustrate from my 
pastoral experience is sinister will domination, 
resulting in moral suicide. That subject has 
been absurdly exploited by novelists. I wish 
to put myself on record as totally rejecting 
the theory that any virtuous, honest person 



SUICIDE OF THE SOUL 109 



can be corrupted by any knave, without some 
conscious, culpable yielding on the part of 
the victim. 

Undoubtedly the mind through the 
nervous system has a powerful influence over 
pathological conditions; that principle is as 
old as the writings of Hypocrates; and I feel 
sure that psyco-therapy in the hands of a 
conscientious physician or a master of psy- 
chology is a valuable remedial agent in cases 
of hypochondria and like maladies, but a 
dangerous practice in the hands of amateurs. 

In this place I am concerned only with 
the ethical side of the subject. I could give 
a score of instances tending to prove the 
reality of sinister will domination, but I shall 
confine myself to one. I have selected it out 
of many cases because it is the only one that 
I can narrate without the possibility of dis- 
closing the identity of the person concerned. 

Many years ago a man and wife moved 
into my parish bringing me a formal letter of 
transfer. They had only recently been 
married. It was evident, even to a casual 
observer, that the husband was a person of 
more native refinement than the wife, though 
she was carefully conventional. A close ob- 
server could also easily see a difference of 
disposition. He was evidently the gentler 
and more unselfish of the two. An intimate 
acquaintance disclosed some radical contrasts 
of character. 



110 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



The husband was a man of average intelli- 
gence, good education and rather distin- 
guished manners; whilst he was not possessed 
of a very strong will, his principles were sound 
and he appeared to be thoroughly conscien- 
tious. He was a fairly successful business 
man with a comfortable, not to say large, 
income. 

The wife had no dowry. She was called 
a beautiful and fascinating woman. If re- 
gular features and a fine figure constitute 
beauty, and vivacious manners and fluency 
of speech are sufficient to make a woman 
fascinating, then she was entitled to the 
double compliment; but to me she was not 
truly beautiful. There was an expression of 
cruelty about the eyes and mouth; and some- 
thing in her manners and voice that was 
distinctly repellant to me. I was slow in 
.analyzing the lady's character because she 
was always gracious and tactful. 

It was not until I spent several weeks 
with the couple in the same hotel, at a summer 
resort, that I saw enough of them to form a 
positive opinion. During that time I dis- 
covered that she was an extremely vain 
woman, and unscrupulously extravagant in 
gratifying her passion for fine dress; worse 
still, she was heartlessly tyrannical toward her 
husband. 



SUICIDE OF TEE 80V L 



111 



The wife's passion for display consumed 
the greater part of the husband's income, and 
at last exceeded it; debt was incurred that it 
was impossible for him to pay. 

I cannot give the details of the gradual 
transformation of the husband's character 
without revealing his identity to persons still 
living ; I must therefore describe it in general 
terms. 

It is only just to say that there was a 
struggle. At first he remonstrated with his 
wife and tried to check her folly. I was the 
unwilling witness of one such effort. At the 
summer resort mentioned, one night I was 
the only person on the hotel veranda, sitting 
in the shadow of a big vine. The husband 
and wife came along the veranda earnestly 
talking in a low tone. I did not suppose their 
conversation was of a private character until 
they came close enough for me to hear him 
say, "My Darling, we cannot possibly afford 
it. Don't you know you are asking me 
to coin my heart's blood for your pleasure?" 
I was glad they passed by without knowing 
that I overheard that terrible remark. 

For awhile the husband seemed very 
unhappy over his financial straits, but finally 
he grew quite reckless. His wife's tyranny, 
at one time, seemed to humiliate him; but he 
grew less and less sensitive to the chains of 
domestic slavery. 



112 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



His business suffered from his broken 
spirit, and the wife's demands grew as the 
husband's resources declined. His resistance 
became feebler and feebler until her will com- 
pletely dominated his. He became a moral 
puppet, and did her wicked bidding almost 
as a machine obeys the hand of the machinist. 
A remarkable feature of the wretched man's 
decay of character is the fact that almost until 
the last his moral obliquity and paralysis of 
will seemed to extend only to the demands of 
the wife. In all affairs that had no connection 
with his wife's wishes, he seemed for a long 
time to preserve his integrity and his normal 
volition. 

I am not sure that I am psychologist 
enough to trace all the factors that entered 
into this abnormal case: No doubt the man's 
passionate love for the woman operated 
powerfully, and I think his neglect of the 
ordinances of religion was one cause of his loss 
of moral resolution; and probably more ob- 
scure factors entered into the man's undoing. 

It is not permissible for me to mention 
the particular form of the catastrophe that 
closed this domestic tragedy; suffice it to say 
that it was a frightful illustration of the dire 
consequences of any one yielding ever so 
slightly, to the influence of another's strong 
and wicked will. 



SUICIDE OF THE SOD L 113 



Whether that husband ever could have 
remoulded his wife's character I do not know; 
but I am very sure that at one stage of the 
slow dying of his will he could have arrested 
the moral decay, and successfully resisted the 
wife's baneful influence. 2" have known of 
several such moral victories. 

I have in course of preparation another 
book, in which I shall treat moral suggestion 
and cognate topics, as a part of social science. 

With the late Professor William James I 
am confident that we are on the eve of a 
great advance in applied psychology. 



114 ODD HAPPENINGS 



SUPPLEMENTAL 

Some years ago, after numerous requests, 
I published, in pamphlet form, two discourses: 
one a Thanksgiving Day Sermon preached in 
the Auditorium of the Southwestern Normal 
School at San Marcos, Texas; the other the 
substance of six brief talks to men, in St. 
Marks Church, San Antonio, Texas, on the 
subject of the Supernatural in Religion. 
Both had a pretty wide circulation, and are 
now out of print. Frequent calls for the 
brochures induce me to reprint them in this 
volume. 

W. C. 



XIX 



CHRIST OR BARABBAS 

"And they cried out all at once: 'Away 
with this man, and release unto us Barab- 
bas." — Luke xxiii, 18. 

It is a good custom for Christian people 
to meet together once' a year, as citizens, to 
thank God for His temporal blessings. 

As a country, as a state and as a local 
community we have much to be thankful for. 
God has blessed us with abundant prosperity, 
not only in the fruits of the earth and the 
rewards of general industry, but also in the 
recent quickening of the public conscience in 
regard to the great wrongs that capitalists 
have so flagrantly perpetrated during the past 
few years. 

Admist all these blessings I think that 
a genuine gratitude will be mixed with anxiety, 
lest we may lose some of the things that we 
think we prize so highly. History is full of 
warnings, — that God may take away blessings 
that are not duly appreciated. Our blessings 
may be imperilled and impaired by the evil 
that ever accompanies the good in this world. 

I think we are prone to attribute the 
prosperity of this country too much to our 
excellent form of government. 

There can be no doubt, whatever, that 
the Federal Constitution and our several 



116 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



State Constitutions, which the wisdom of our 
fore-fathers bequeathed to us, are safe-guards 
of liberty, and have contributed richly to the 
glory of this land. But I fear that these 
admirable charters of civil life are not absolute 
guaranties of the perpetual peace and pros- 
perity of the country. 

Even a superficial reading of history will 
teach us that there is no such inherent virtue 
in the republican form of government as some 
Americans complacently attribute to it. 

We have but to recall Athens and the 
Achean league, Consular Rome and the first 
French Republic in order to confute the as- 
sumption that a republican form of govern- 
ment cannot decay and die of corruption. 

I think a careful study of history will 
teach us that it is not so much the form of 
government that insures the prosperity of any 
country, as the influence of Christianity. 

If it be argued that the first French Re- 
public was a part of Christendom, I reply 
that the animus of that movement was never- 
theless essentially anti-Christian. 

On the other hand, we see the influence 
of Christianity giving personal liberty and a 
high degree of prosperity to a Constitutional 
Monarchy in England. 

If it appears that we owe the success of 
our government, if we owe the safety of 
the very foundations of society to the Chris- 



CHRIST OR BARABBAS 117 



tian religion, good citizenship demands 
Christian faith and practice. 

The very corner stone of our government 
is a Christian idea, viz: the equal right of all 
men to the benefits of the social compact, 
which grows naturally out of the equal rights 
of all men under the Gospel: and the ideal 
citizenship at which all free governments aim 
is essentially a Christian principle, and that 
is — the duty of every man to contribute his 
utmost effort for the common good. The 
social code of Christ is the only one that gives 
any hope of a reconciliation of the conflicting 
claims of individualism and the State. 

All God's gifts to society involve the 
obligation of preserving and transmitting 
them; it is at once the instinct of paternity 
and the dictate of patriotism. We are not 
only the beneficiaries of our civil and social 
blessings, we are their custodians also. We 
have no right selfishly to enjoy and lose what 
God has given us to transmit to posterity. 
Our National blessings, like all good things on 
this earth, are liable to suffer loss from evil 
influences. 

I believe that there is an evil influence in 
our day, which is undermining the foundations 
of social order and civil liberty — an evil that 
is forcing an issue upon the friends of Christian 
civilization — an issue between Christ and 
Anarchy. The words of the text foreshadowed 
this issue. 



118 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



The record of our Lord's trial and cruci- 
fixion is full of profoundly significant lessons; 
lessons for the citizen as well as for the Church 
member; for the statesman, no less than for 
the ecclesiastic. There seemed to be com- 
pressed into the events of that awful Friday, 
an epitome of the world's history. 

Amongst the significant stages of the sub- 
lime tragedy, there is one scene which par- 
ticularly affords instruction to Christian 
citizens. 

It was when the cruel mockery of a trial 
was well nigh concluded: the subtle charges 
of the Sanhedrin had been presented, the false 
witnesses had given their infamous testimony, 
the Divine man had suffered the mocking, 
the buffeting, the spitting. It was evident 
that the noble prisoner was innocent, and yet 
the procurator hesitated. The Jewish leaders 
were present with their threatening intima- 
tions of complaint to the Emperor, — "If 
thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's 
friend!" and a clamorous rabble was there 
brewing tumult. Thus menaced, the governor 
is irresolute, and seeks to escape the respon- 
sibility of either convicting or acquitting the 
accused. 

It was the custom to release some prisoner 
upon the occasion of the festival then being 
celebrated; and so Pilate asked, "Whom will 
ye, that I release unto you — Barabbas or 
Jesus?" Which would they choose for 



CHRIST OR BARABBAS 



119 



executive clemency — the embodiment of 
virtue, or the robber, the murderer, the mover 
of sedition? ' 'And they cried out all at once, 
saying away with this man and release unto 
us Barabbas!" What was the meaning of 
that cry? Why away with the Messiah, the 
hope of Isreal, and claim pardon for a criminal ? 

The men composing the crowd had, in 
common with the whole Jewish people been 
long expecting that Messiah; but they ex- 
pected a temporal Messiah, a second Joshua 
— a royal leader who could emancipate them 
from Roman subjugation. 

They had indulged in dreams of a return 
of the halcyon days when the "land flowed 
with milk and honey." 

But, all these hopes of material pros- 
perity as the largesses of the Messiah were 
doomed to disappointment. 

The meek and lowly Jesus, teaching that 
His Kingdom was not of this world, was not 
what they were looking for. 

A Messiah sanctioning the paying of 
tribute money to Caesar was to their minds 
preposterous in the last degree. There was 
no encouragement in that kind of Messianic 
wisdom, to attack and pillage the palaces of 
Herod and Pilate. In a word, the Saviour, 
when his doctrine was known, was not 
"popular with the masses." But that was 
not all; Jesus not only disappointed their 
sordid expectations, but he exasperated them. 



120 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



''Whosoever shall humble himself as a little 
child, the same shall be greatest in the King- 
dom of Heaven" — was offensive to their 
gross, hard natures. The whole teaching of 
Christ on the subject of social duties rebuked 
the spirit of envy, covetousness and violence; 
and these feelings toward the Romans were 
deepseated in the Jewish heart. 

These people were eager enough to follow 
Jesus when the loaves and fishes were being 
handed around; and, it is recorded that "the 
common people heard him gladly" when he 
was denouncing the ostentation and selfishness 
of the aristocratic Scribes and Pharisees; and, 
yet these same "common people" permitted 
themselves to be instigated by those same 
Aristocrats to destroy the Saviour. 

Here, then, was the meaning of that 
shout — "Away with this man, release unto 
us Barabbas!" The ignorant, vicious 
members of that society were filled with 
murderous rage because their coarse selfish- 
ness was disappointed, and because their 
brutal natures were rebuked by the exquisite 
loveliness of Christ's character. 

And, as quite a matter of course, this 
stupid, blind rage of the populace was taken 
advantage of by the more cunning enemies 
of the Lord, who hated Him because they 
could not use Him for their own aggrandize- 
ment; and these combined forces assail the 
integrity of the cowardly and tyrannical 



CHRIST OR BARABBAS 121 



Pilate: and so these anti-Christian forces of 
Jerusalem succeed in perpetrating the pre- 
eminent crime of all history. They "Crucify 
the Lord of Glory." 

The voice of the mob that howled for the 
crucifixion of Christ was the prophetic ante 
type of modern Anarchism — the spirit that 
impels a certain class of men to hate all other 
men who have more property, or culture 
than themselves. The fullest expression of 
which spirit we have had in modern times was 
the first French Revolution. That spasm of 
social delirium was the manifestation of a 
disease of society: a disease that is in the blood 
of all aggregations of men, in all times and 
amongst all nations; all it needs for its most 
virulent outbreak is a depression of the general 
moral health of society. 

I think there are many signs that modern 
society is in danger of a fresh paroxysm of the 
spirit that crucified Christ, and that pre- 
cipitated the first French revolution. It is 
entirely possible that we shall have all the 
horrors of the "reign of terror" upon us. We 
may yet witness the overthrow of lawful 
authority, bread riots, and demolition of 
public buildings. 

We, who are now living, may see our 
streets literally flow with blood as did those 
of brilliant Paris. We may see brave men 
and lovely women slaughtered for the single 
offense of gentility. 



122 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



We may, as did Christian Frenchmen, see 
the Christian religion abolished by legislative 
decree and a representative of impurity 
enthroned upon a desecrated altar, like the 
hideous sacrilege at Notre Dame: For that 
is the spirit of Anarchism, the spirit that cried 
for Barabbas to be turned loose. 

Are not many of the labor strikes that 
have been accompanied by blood shed, evi- 
dence of a mixture of this spirit with the just 
and righteous indignation of those who have 
suffered oppression? I thoroughly sym- 
pathize with the Labor Unions in their lawful 
efforts at self-protection, but when they under- 
take, by violence, to prevent non-union men 
from working for whatever wage they please, 
and when they undertake to destroy the 
property of the employer, then those members 
of the Labor Unions become criminals, and 
the worst enemies of Liberty. 

We are apt to flatter ourselves that 
organized Anarchism is not likely to make 
any headway in this country, seeing that our 
popular form of government permits the 
vicious elements of society to express their 
discontent through the ballot box. So far 
from being a safe-guard, universal suffrage 
is a source of imminent danger, because the 
Anarchists, after their sporadic efforts are 
checked will aim to get control of the mach- 
inery of the government so as to do their 
destructive work through the forms of law; 



CHRIST OR BARABBAS 123 



and that danger plainly enough indicates the 
duty of all Christian citizens and friends of 
civilization. 

We ought not to rely too confidently 
upon the ballot as the bulwark of Popular 
government when we think of the character 
of the men frequently elected to public office 
and the apathy of respectable citizens when 
any crying reform is urged. 

But what if the spirit of Barabbas fail 
(as we most devoutly hope and pray it may 
fail) permanently to obtain possession of the 
government through the peaceful instrument- 
ality of the ballot box, what then? Why then 
the spirit of Anarchism organized as a party 
will disclose its genuine character with knife 
and torch and dynamite bomb. 

And now, my Christian brethren, in view 
of this impending evil what is the duty of 
Christian citizenship? 

The first and most obvious duty of 
Christian citizens is to take care that the 
seditious elements have no just cause of com- 
plaint. It is useless to deny that the working 
classes, good and bad, have had cause for 
complaint. Soulless corporations have op- 
pressed labor; vulgar millionaires have 
flaunted their stolen wealth in the faces of 
outraged communities. 

It is a disgrace to civilized society that 
any man should posses a hundred million 
dollars, while thousands of his fellowmen are 



124 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



working for a dollar a day. There must be 
a remedy for these wrongs, and it is the duty 
of Christian citizens to see that the remedy 
is found and applied. 

But after legislation has done its utmost, 
the greater part of the evil will remain, because 
Anarchism is a disease of the aggregate heart 
of mankind: if it be allowed to develop it will 
vent its frantic love of destruction without just 
cause. We need not only remedial measures, 
but preventive measures. 

One thing that some of us can do to check 
the development of Anarchism is to exclude 
its authors and advocates from good society. 
There is a peculiar power in social ostracism, 
which has a right use as well as a cruelly 
wrong use. It is a right use of it to draw a 
sharp, clear line against all who provoke 
sedition by wronging the poor, and all who 
cater to the rabble for the sake of office or 
gain. 

The greatest enemy of democracy is the 
demagogue. 

The two grand divisions of society are the 
constructive and destructive forces. It is 
of great importance that we should discrim- 
inate between these elements, and deny 
fellowship to the destructive forces. But 
the preventive measure of supreme importance 
is the education of the young in sound prin- 
ciples of Bible morality; amongst other 



CHRIST OR BARABBAS 125 



principles, this — that "the powers that be 
are ordained of God." 

Our public schools should be in the hands 
of the most enlightened and most virtuous 
men of the community, who should see to it 
that the instruction provided by the state 
shall make good citizens. 

The only justification for the taxation 
that supports the public schools is the 
necessity of training children to become good 
citizens. 

But if our State Schools were all that 
they ought to be they could not possibly do 
all that ought to be done for the moral con- 
struction of the good citizen. 

The good citizen is a product of Chris- 
tianity; and the non-sectarian character of our 
public schools limits their moral influence. 

If we would have a country of Liberty 
and Righteousness we must realize Cavour's 
ideal of a "Free Church in a free State." 

The Church of God has a work to do in 
fitting men for citizenship under a free govern- 
ment. The cultured Christian classes are 
responsible before God for the right education 
of the children of the vicious classes. This is 
a part of the purpose of the great and sacred 
bond of Christian brotherhood. The brother- 
hood of rich and poor, of education and 
ignorance, of brains and muscle. The Chris- 
tian citizen should stretch out a brotherly 



126 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



hand to every man who is willing to be taught 
and helped to do right. 

The great peril of our times is the with- 
drawal of the natural, God-appointed leaders 
of the people from the front of the moral 
battle that is being waged between the forces 
of' Christ and Anarchy; men of brains and 
character and lofty virtue are shrinking from 
the thick of the fight because the false and 
corrupt leaders of the masses are unscrupulous 
and vituperative. But good captains must 
not mind the blood and dust of the battle 
field. If the lovers of law and order would 
only rally to the support of our Christian 
civilization, we should soon see tokens of 
Almighty help — as Constantine and his 
chivalrous followers of the cross with the eye 
faith saw the blazing token in the heavens — 
"In hoc signo vincesl" (By this sign conquer.) 



XX 



THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION. 

The almost universal acceptance of the 
theory of Evolution by educated men has 
created difficulties in many minds about the 
supernatural element of religion. Opposi- 
tion to a belief in the supernatural appears 
in phases as various as blasphemous atheism, 
"The Natural Religion" and "Ethical 
Christianity." 

There is a recognition of the demon- 
strated facts of evolution which is consistent 
with the orthodox faith, as shown by Pro- 
fessors Virchow, Mivart and Le Conte, the 
Duke of Argyll and the late Dr. McCosh. 
But this recognition of scientific truth must 
be distinguished from the mere hypotheses 
of men like Haeckel. 

The rejection of the supernatural is pre- 
dicated upon the postulate that the progress 
of the world's development has been step by 
step, each step dependent upon the next previous 
step, without a break in the continuity of the 
process. Of course such theory must exclude 
the Incarnation, the corner stone of the whole 
fabric of the supernatural in Christianity. 

We must frankly admit that the Incar- 
nation was a new order; it was a distinct 
intervention in the previously established 
order of nature. 



128 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



Whilst thus admitting that the virgin 
birth of the Saviour was not in accordance 
with the uniformity of the laws of nature 
established at that period, we still contend 
that it is not inconsistent with the accepted data 
of science. On the contrary, science teaches 
us that the progress of the world's develop- 
ment has not been a process of unbroken 
continuity. There have been crises in the 
world's progress; there have been several fresh 
starts; new orders have been introduced. 
Such were the creation of matter, the advent of 
organic life and the attainment by the human 
race of the moral faculty. 

As some evolutionists seem to assume the 
eternity of matter, and some argue that the 
moral faculty of man might have been de- 
veloped naturally, let us waive the contention 
as to these, and rest our argument upon the 
certainty that the advent of organic life was a 
new order in the progress of the world. Cer- 
tainly no germ of organic life could have 
existed on this planet when the earth was a 
red-hot, molten mass; and Mr. Tyndall has 
proved the impossibility of spontaneous 
generation. 

If there has been one break in the con- 
tinuity of the process of the world's progress, 
then there may have been two or many such 
interventions in the previous order of nature. 
The Incarnation, therefore, is not incredible 
on scientific grounds. Of course I am not 



THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 129 

using this datum of science to prove the truth 
of the Incarnation, that rests on positive 
and independent evidence. So far I am 
simply traversing the assumption of the 
agnostic that the Incarnation is incredible on 
scientific grounds. My contention is that the 
Incarnation is no more incredible to the 
scientific mind than the advent of organic 
life on this planet. 

Ignoring the question of the possibility 
of an Incarnation of the Diety, the advocates 
of "A Natural Religion" tell us that the true 
religious nature of man does not need the 
supernatural; that religion, stripped of super- 
stition, is simply the code of Utilitarianism. 
It is argued that men, by an irresistible law 
of their being, seek their own good, and that 
experience has taught the race that what we 
call virtue is more beneficial to society than 
vice; in a word, that virtue is merely the policy 
of the race that has become crystalized into 
an intuition by tradition and heredity. 

The apostles of this Natural religion try 
to explain the universal belief in the super- 
natural by tracing it to the mysteries of nature 
and to the impression of our dreams of the 
departed. They offer as a substitute for our 
aspirations for immortality a hope of the 
future perfection of the race on earth. 

All this far-fetched speculation grows out 
of the exigencies of the mechanical notion of 



130 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



law, a theory which excludes the conception 
of a moral quality in the conduct of man. 

How can there be merit or demerit in any 
act of man if in either case the right or wrong 
act was the result of an inexorable law grinding 
out the conduct of men. One simple fact is 
fatal to this whole fatalistic system — the ex- 
istence of man's will, the freedom of which 
has the highest proof we can demand, viz: 
universal consciousness. 

The advocates of this sentimental atheism 
would lead us to believe that this present life 
and the face of nature afford sufficient mat- 
erial for the construction of a rational religion. 
Recognizing that any system claiming to be 
a religion must afford an impulse to benev- 
olence, they claim that the consensus of men 
that benevolence is good policy would afford 
a sufficient motive for all the philanthropy 
that is useful and healthy. 

Let us see where this leads : My kinsman 
or neighbor is sick or has met with an accident. 
Of course, if his recovery is probable, it would 
be ' 'expedient" for me to minister to him, 
because his restoration to active life would be 
good for society; and besides I might get hurt 
or fall sick myself, and in that case I should 
need his help. But if he is so wounded that 
he can never be able to work, or if he is doomed 
by a fatal malady to lingering illness and 
certain death, then it would be expedient to 
kill him — of course as painlessly as possible; 



THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 131 



it would certainly be the best thing, on this 
utilitarian theory, to put the hopeless invalid 
out of his misery and relieve society of the 
burden of supporting a worthless member; 
and, if a neighbor or kinsman were not kind 
enough to take the trouble to perform this 
friendly act, why should not the invalid him- 
self take the fatal draught and end his useless 
and unhappy existence? 

For the same reason, it would be judicious 
to kill off the infirm grandfathers and 
grandmothers. 

Imagine the influence of such customs 
upon the human heart. The universal 
prevalence of such ethics would transform 
men and women into human fiends. 

There is one fact — a blessed fact — that 
cuts this materialistic morality up by the roots : 
the judgment of the whole human race that 
the highest type of virtue is heroism; which 
is the brave doing of good, when the good 
cannot benefit the doer; benevolence that is 
not useful to the benefactor. 

The very foundation of this utilitarian 
system of so-called morals is false. For if 
policy be the only reason for doing right, then 
any act which we now call a crime could never 
seem wrong to the perpetrator if he could be 
sure he would never be punished for it. 

The natural religion makers recognize as 
a principle necessary to any religion, a certain 
amount of awe and reverence. It is a universal 



132 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



intuition that cannot be ignored. Well, what 
does the natural religion offer as a worthy 
object of man's worship? "Our Mother 
Nature," say they, "offers us in her sublime 
aspects an inspiring object of reverence — so 
far," they are careful to add, "as reverence 
is rational." 

Behold, say they, the lofty mountain 
lifting its colossal head to the sky, the roaring 
cataract warning the boatsman of its crushing 
power, the terrific cyclone marching with royal 
grandeur through the prostrated city and 
forest! Lift up your eyes and see the 
sparkling worlds that gem the firmament with 
sweetest light — light that has traveled 
thousands of years and billions of miles to 
reach us tonight; and above all, glorify the 
great luminary of our world, the center of our 
planetary system, and the author of life, 
because the source of our light and heat. 

But is this worship? Does it satisfy the 
cry of an orphaned soul to lift up the aching 
heart to the dead, soulless features of awful 
nature? What voice comes from the moun- 
tain or the sun to soothe the mother's heart 
as she lays the form of her babe in the cold 
earth? Does that Mother Earth give back 
a tear of sympathy or a promise of safe keeping 
of the precious child, and a joyful restoration 
of the sweet life that was snatched from her 
stricken bosom? 



THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 133 

When the poor, stained, scarred soul, 
weighed down with the wretched burden of 
sin would seek relief from the fierce, threat- 
ening accusations of an awakened conscience, 
will the stars pour out forgiveness ? Will the 
floods of Niagara wash out the blot of one foul 
sin? Well said the great master of drama, 
of the crime of the guilty queen: 

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this 
blood clean from my hand? No! This my 
hand will rather the multitudinous seas 
incarnadine, making the green, one red." 

Shakespeare knew not much theology, 
but he knew the human heart. 

The whole tendency of this mocking sub- 
stitute for religion is a reversal of the aspir- 
ation of the human soul. It is a perversion 
of the office of nature in the economy of grace. 

The Christian is led from his contem- 
plation of the modest violet at his feet to the 
baptism of rain that refreshes its fragrant life, 
away beyond to the benignant sun, that 
warms and lightens all creatures; and then 
from all created things to the Creator Himself, 
and rests his weary heart on the bosom of the 
everlasting Father — precious privilege pur- 
chased by the atoning blood of the Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ — human kinsman and 
divine Redeemer; whilst the devotee of 
the "Natural Religion" directs his spectro- 
scope to the worlds above, only to analyze 
their elements, and gives us an apotheosis of 



134 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



black lines and red lines, and carbon and 
oxygen. 

Nature is an oracle of God; but she is a 
bewildering interpreter of the Divine 
character without the key of revelation. 

All the scattered rays of the Sun of 
righteousness diffused through nature had to 
be concentrated in the living lens of the Son 
of God before it could warm us into faith in 
the love of the Heavenly Father. Revelation 
leaves much hidden that we aspire to know. 
"We know only in part," "We see through a 
glass — darkly." But, in all our ignorance, in 
all our groping for more light, we have the 
witness of the Spirit that we are the children 
of God. 

We turn in loathing from the "Philosophy 
of frog spawn" and the worship of dead nature 
to the service of the living God. And, with 
Francis Turner Palgrave, look through nature 
up to God: 

"Then though the sun go up 

His beaten azure way, 
God will fulfill His thought 

And bless His world today. 

Beside the law of things 

The law of mind enthrone, 

And for the hope of all, 

Reveal Himself in One. 

Himself the way that leads us thither, 
The all-in-all, the whence and whither." 



THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 135 



There are those for whom nature is not 
a sufficient guide in religion, who would fain 
preserve the ethical content of Christianity- 
after they have eliminated the supernatural 
element. The fallacy of that system may, 
perhaps, be sufficiently exposed by a reference 
to the inconsistencies of one of its most popular 
advocates, Mrs. Humphrey Ward. In her 
novel, Robert Elsmere, she undertakes with 
a masterly style to show how the moral and 
social value of Christianity may survive the 
surrender of its claim to a supernatural origin. 
And yet, what is the outcome of the story? 
What is the unconscious argument of the 
development of her characters? With the 
true instinct of the literary artiste the author 
portrays all the rejectors of the supernatural 
as living blundering, ineffectual lives, most of 
them dying miserably. On the other hand, 
the only consistent and happy character in 
the book is Mrs. Elsmere, a devout, orthodox 
Christian. 

Ernest Renan, in his "Life of Jesus," is 
even more flagrantly self-contradictory; but 
the limits of this discourse will not admit of 
an analysis of his fallacies. 

When we drive the enemies of the super- 
natural from the entrenchments of their 
several substitutes for orthodox Christianity, 
they assume a negative attitude, and say: 
"Well, the champions of revealed religion are 
unable to verify its claims by logical processes" 



136 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



They who urge this objection seem to think 
that this proposition being once established, 
the last word of controversy is said. 

The appropriate reply to this assertion 
is somewhat in the nature of what lawyers 
under the old system of pleading called 
"Confession and avoidance." 

It is perfectly true that the supernatural 
part of religion is beyond verification by logical 
processes. But there is another faculty for 
the verification of truth beside the logical 
faculty. The syllogism is not the only in- 
strument for weighing evidence. The reason 
of man is larger than logic. Christianity does 
not claim to be in all its bearings demonstrable 
to the understanding. 

There are bearings of revealed religion 
which confessedly transcend the domain of 
logic. The logical faculty is not the whole of 
man. Man is a tripartite being, composed 
of body, mind and spirit. Call this third 
element what you will, soul, spirit, moral 
nature, the fact of its existence and its dis- 
tinction from the strictly mental faculty is a 
matter of the world's history, and every indi- 
vidual's experience. 

The superstitions of all barbarous peoples, 
the mythology of ancient Greece, the mystical 
philosophy of India — in a word, the religious 
instinct of the race — bears witness to the 
existence of an element in man distinct from 
the mere thinking faculty. Man's reason, in 



TEE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 137 

the narrow sense of the word, has never 
satisfied the aspirations of the spiritual faculty. 
Even amongst people who have had no revel- 
ation, or only the faint vestiges of one — among 
even these — there has always been a craving 
for intercourse with Diety, the association of 
the moral nature of man with the super- 
natural, a thirst for the transcendental. 

The demands of this spiritual nature can 
no more be met by the mere intellect than the 
demands of the intellect can be satisfied by 
physical comfort. It is quite true that the 
laws of this spiritual faculty are very subtle; 
it seems to be of a much finer spun nature 
than the strictly intellectual. But this ought 
not to surprise us, for the law of evolution is 
a progress from the simple to the complex; 
the higher the development the more com- 
plicated the structure; and the more complex 
the structure the greater the difficulty of 
adaptation to environment. Hence the 
vicissitudes of our spiritual faculty. The law 
of harmony is differentiation; hence the 
necessity of the subordination of the lower to 
the higher. 

The three elements of man are not co- 
ordinate. If the body crave something that 
the judgment condemns as unwholesome, the 
appetite must give way to the command of 
the understanding; and, carrying the principle 
one step higher, when the intellect staggers 
and gropes in the presence of supernatural 



138 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



phenomena, the spiritual faculty comes to the 
rescue and recognizes the fact that the 
' 'natural man perceiveth not the things of the 
Spirit of God because they are spiritually 
discerned," as St. Paul said long ago. 

But a difficulty encounters us right here. 
The spiritual faculty itself sometimes totters. 
There is something the matter with man's 
spiritual nature. It does not seem to work 
with normal force and regularity. It has 
permitted some very foolish things. It has 
sanctioned the worship of beasts and idols; 
it has approved of human sacrifices. The 
highly developed intellect, seeing these things, 
distrusts the spiritual faculty, and no wonder. 
This difficulty has ever puzzled philosophers. 
They instinctively felt that the spiritual 
faculty was the commander in chief of man's 
composite forces; but they saw plainly enough 
that it was a fallible chief. Compte, in his 
Positivism aimed to cut the Gordian knot by 
simply repudiating the universal instinct of 
the race; and reversing the relation of intellect 
and spiritual faculty, made the intellect chief 
and the spiritual faculty inferior. 

With as good reason might he have denied 
the mind's rightful superiority to the body, 
because with most men the judgment does not 
always successfully and wisely govern the 
body. 

If the existence of idolatry is proof that 
the spiritual faculty is inferior to the mental, 



TEE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 139 

then the existence of drunkenness proves that 
the mind is inferior to the body. 

Fallibility is not fatal to superiority. If 
it were we could have no military chiefs and 
no courts of last resort. 

How then shall we account for these 
notorious aberrations of the spiritual faculty, 
and what remedy shall we apply? 

The Christian's diagnosis of this spiritual 
malady is man's natural depravity; in other 
words, moral heredity. Adam having sinned, 
our sinful tendency is as natural as your in- 
heritance of your blue eyes from your mother 
or your musical talent from your grandfather. 
But the agnostic will say: "Ah, ha! you're 
tripping; that is a begging of the question. 
You haven't proved there was any Adam, 
much less have you authenticated the history 
of his fall." 

Very well, we will for the moment not 
insist upon the truth of the Scriptures, which 
give us the history of man's original innocence 
and subsequent fall. Be the cause of man's 
depraved inclinations what it may, the fact 
of the moral obliquity is unquestionable; and 
no enemy of Christianity has yet proved a 
cause or suggested even a probable hypothesis. 
Let us go back to the facts. 

Here is the man with three elements, 
body mind and spirit; the body evidently 
designed to be subject to the mind, 
and the spirit evidently transcending the 



140 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



domain of the mind. And yet this com- 
mander in chief of this composite being is 
liable to great eccentricity. What shall be 
done to give the spiritual faculty steadiness 
and correct its aberrations? It evidently 
needs some external influence to make it 
trustworthy. 

At this point revealed religion comes in 
and presents the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and 
with it the office of the Holy Spirit to guide 
man into the path of his highest development, 
even to eternal life. But the unbeliever will 
here reply: "That is your theory of the 
matter. Give us logical proof." And when 
we reply: "The natural man receiveth not 
the things of God, because they are spiritually 
discerned," he replies: "Well, why cannot I 
discern these things of God (if there are any 
such things) as well as the Christian?" 
We answer: Because you do not use the 
appropriate instrument; you do not address 
to the task the proper faculty. You do not 
try to spiritually discern these things. You 
cannot count the facets of a fly's eye with a 
telescope, nor can you see the rings of Saturn 
with a microscope. The objector is apt to 
reply that this answer of ours amounts to the 
dethronement of man's judgment. Not at all; 
we do not ask the intellect to resign its bench, 
but simply to confine its adjudications to 
matters within its jurisdiction. The juris- 
diction of the intellect is supreme and ex- 



j I THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 141 

elusive in matters subject to logical processes. 
Our contention is that there is another and a 
higher court having jurisdiction of things 
spiritual. 

The claims of the understanding must 
undoubtedly be met and satisfied. However 
far beyond logic religion may carry us, it must 
never be unreasonable. The legitimate de- 
mands of logic carry us through essential 
processes to the very threshold of religion. 
To this end we furnish historical proofs of the 
Jewish prophecies of a Messiah. The almost 
universal expectation throughout the civilized 
world, for a century before the advent of 
Christ, of the coming of a great reformer, a 
moral deliverer of superhuman power. We 
furnish evidence, also, of the birth of Christ. 
His teaching, the calling of His disciples, His 
death, the belief of His disciples in His per- 
formance of miracles, and their belief in His 
resurrection from the dead. We prove also 
the organization and missionary work of the 
Church, the marvelous spread of Christianity, 
the joyful martyrdom suffered by persecuted 
Christians. We urge also the worthy char- 
acter of God, as set forth in the Scriptures, 
the excellence of the Christian code of morals 
and the influence of Christianity upon society. 
These are all facts, and they constitute an 
appeal to the understanding. We submit 
them to the forum of the intellect. Some of 



142 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



these facts are essential to the maintenance of 
Christianity. 

If history and logic applied to the facts 
can overthrow them, then undoubtedly our 
religion is wanting in an adequate foundation. 
But the controversy is not about these facts. 
They are almost universally admitted by un- 
believers. These questions of ordinary his- 
torical fact we submit to the forum of logic, 
and judgment is for us. 

But we are impleaded before the bar of 
the intellect with a further controversy. 
The virgin birth of Christ, the reality of His 
miracles and His resurrection, the efficacy of 
prayer and of the sacraments, and the in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit are traversed in this 
court. What is our plea? We deny the juris- 
diction of the court. 

Of course such evidence of the miracles 
of Christ and of His resurrection may be 
demanded as is suitable to prove other his- 
torical facts; but when it is alleged that no 
evidence can be sufficient to establish a 
miracle, we deny the jurisdiction of the mere 
intellect in the matter. Miracles, as attest- 
ations of a divine revelation, appeal to a 
higher faculty than the logical faculty. This 
species of evidence is addressed to the spirit. 
So with regard to prayer, the sacraments and 
the influence of the Holy Spirit. 

It is reasonable for the non-Christian to 
expect that there shall be evidence of moral 



THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 143 

improvement and elevation of character in 
men who profess to have divine assistance in 
their struggle with the baser nature; but when 
unbelievers would test the influence of the 
Holy Spirit by the laws of dynamics, and 
demand concrete demonstration of spiritual 
force, again we plead jurisdiction. Before 
we leave this tribunal, however, I wish to call 
attention to a matter of fact of which un- 
believers are singularly oblivious. I allude 
to the testimony of Christians as to their 
experience of the comfort and joy of their 
religion. 

It is competent for unbelievers to prove 
(if they can) that the professed experience of 
christians is hypocrisy or lunacy; but it is ut- 
terly unscientific to ignore the testimony of 
millions of people to a tremendous psycho- 
logical phenomenon. 

That unbelievers find it impossible to 
believe in the virgin birth, miracles and resur- 
rection of Christ, the moral efficacy of the 
sacraments, the potency of prayer and the 
help and comfort of the Holy Spirit, is no 
proof against the verity of these elements of 
religion, because the unbeliever seeks the 
verification of them by a faculty inappropriate 
and inadequate. And when we claim that 
these "things of God" are "spiritually dis- 
cerned," it is no answer to reply that the 
unbeliever does not discern them, because he 
does not direct his spiritual faculties to the 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



investigation. He does not try to discern 
with his spirit. He scouts and rejects the 
verifying function of the spirit of man. And 
even if the unbeliever, as a matter of experi- 
ment, should try for a moment to direct his 
spiritual faculties to the task of investigating 
the truth of religion, his first feeble efforts 
would yield no strong and conclusive result. 
For the spiritual nature must be cultivated 
in order to acquire vigorous powers of dis- 
cernment. As F. W. Robertson says, "Doing 
is an essential organ of knowing." 

The Saviour anticipated this situation 
when He said: "If any man will do God's 
will he shall know of the doctrine, whether it 
be of God." 

Of course, we cannot prove this to the 
unbeliever by reasoning, but perhaps we may 
be able to induce another kind of consider- 
ation of it if we can find an analogy between 
the spiritual faculty and some intellectual 
faculty. I think we have this analogy in the 
resemblance of the operations of Taste to 
those of the Spirit. The sense of the beautiful 
is a faculty of the mind which is not at all 
dependent upon logical processes. It matters 
not, for our purpose, which theory of taste 
we adopt, whether the objective or the sub- 
jective. There must be aesthetic truth, 
whether it reside in the qualities of the thing 
admired or in the laws of the mind of the 
admirer. There must be an absolute basis 



THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 145 



for the sense of the beautiful, or there could 
be no approximation to agreement amongst 
men as to what is beautiful and what is not. 

The essential nature of taste has never 
been satisfactorily analyzed, and yet all 
persons of any culture know that there is such 
an excellence in nature and in art as "the 
beautiful." This faculty is, I repeat, not 
subject to the forms of logic. The under- 
standing does indeed explain, to some extent, 
why some things probably give us pleasure 
and some things disgust, but the ultimate 
appeal in aesthetics is not to logic, but to the 
instinctive natural sense of the beautiful. 
If a man fail to perceive the beautiful in an 
object which gives the highest pleasure to 
others, you cannot excite his admiration by 
argument. 

Take a man of strong intellect, but with 
taste depraved by coarse vice and vulgar 
associations, to an art gallery, show him 
Angelo's "Statue of Moses," and Leonardo 
da Vinci's "Last Supper." If he calls one 
a waste of marble and the other a meaningless 
daub, how are you going to induce him to 
admire those master pieces? John Ruskin 
could not have done it. All that could be 
done for the poor man would be to persuade 
him to begin the cultivation of his taste. Take 
him out in the open air, point out to him 
the simplest beauties of nature, and gradually, 



146 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



day after day, lead his eyes up from flower and 
tree and mountain to behold the glories of 
iridescent sunset. 

And so he might be trained to enjoy the 
beautiful. But this training is certainly not 
a process of logic. Does not this fact — that 
taste is a matter of culture and not a matter 
of reason, illustrate the function of the Spirit 
in discerning "the things of God?" 

I am not arguing that there is any 
necessary connection between taste and 
religion (though there is, indeed, an ultimate 
connection between all truths). A man may 
have a great deal of aesthetic culture, with 
little or no religion; another man may be very 
religious and yet have an undeveloped taste. 
What I am endeavoring to show is not relation 
of causality between aesthetics and religion, 
but an analogy between the faculty which 
perceives the beautiful and the faculty which 
discerns the spiritual. 

The trouble with unbelievers is not 
always a want of intellectual culture, but a 
lack of spiritual culture. 

After you have established the non- 
miraculous facts in the history of Christianity 
and called attention to the testimony of 
Christians as to their experience of the benefits 
of religion, you can do an unbeliever no more 
good by debating with him. 



TEE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 147 



If the unbeliever would make further 
progress he must renounce his intellectual 
conceit and become as a little child spiritually, 
that he may enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 
He must begin his spiritual culture by the 
humble practice of such Christian virtues as 
his conscience approves, and so his spiritual 
nature will develop and gradually enable him 
to understand and receive more and more of 
the "things of God." 

The study — the sincere, unprejudiced 
study of the character of Christ is an essential 
exercise in this culture; and as soon as he can 
do so with sincerity, though still with doubt, 
the spiritual tyro must pray — pray for a 
teachable temper, divine wisdom, and the 
aid of the Holy Spirit. Presently this 
spiritual infant will begin to enjoy the con- 
sciousness of God's love and the preciousness 
of a Saviour; and so the divine process will go 
on until he "come unto the measure of the 
stature of the fulness of Christ." 

The spirit of man, having once discerned 
the Spirit of God in his redemption and grace 
and comfort, belief in miracles is no more diffi- 
cult than a belief in creation (which was a 
miracle to the angels that beheld it). The man 
who knows Christ as a gracious Saviour cannot 
help believing his Saviour divine. He feels 
that Christ must have been miraculously 
born, must have risen from the dead. No 



148 



ODD HAPPENINGS 



other theory is in keeping with his experience 
of the divine character of his Lord. So it 
comes to pass that we believe in the miracles 
of Christ because of His divinity instead, as of 
old, believing in His divinity because of His 
miracles. Thus the vision of man's spirit 
reaches beyond the utmost penetration of his 
mere intellect. 

If this be our privilege to discern the 
things of the Spirit, why, it may be asked, are 
so many Christians apparently groping in the 
dark? Why do many Christians seem to make 
so little progress in the spiritual life? It is 
the object of half the preaching heard from 
our pulpits to answer that question — a mo- 
mentous question. Upon its answer depends 
the growth and destiny of man's spirit. St. 
Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans (xii. 2), 
answers that question: "Be not conformed to 
this world, but be transformed by the renewing 
of your mind, that ye may prove what is that 
good and acceptable and perfect will of God." 
And again, in his Second Epistle to the Corin- 
thians (II. Cor. v. 17), "If any man be in Christ 
he is a new creature." Avoiding all contro- 
versial questions about Conversion and Re- 
generation, let us realize what all theologians 
admit, that the entire devotion of the heart to 
God is involved in that "renewing of the mind" 
by which a man becomes a "new creature" in 
Christ. The surrender of the human will to 



THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELIGION 149 



the divine will, the unreserved consecration of 
life to God's service — this is key to the spirit- 
ual discernment that takes knowledge of the 
things of God. This is the crucial test that 
determines whether or not a man "be in 
Christ." This is the attitude of the spirit 
that secures the re-enforcement of the poor 
human will by the Omnipotent Spirit of God. 
Thus do we "lay hold on eternal life." This 
and this alone brings to the spirit of man the 
"peace that passeth understanding." 



ADDENDUM. 



A member of my Bible Class in St. 
Andrew's Church, Jackson, Mississippi, recent- 
ly asked me, after the lesson, what I thought 
of Winston Churchill's novel — "The Inside 
of the Cup," and I said, "You may well 
distrust the argument of the author when 
you reflect that his eulogized hero holds 
and teaches doctrines contrary to the faith 
he solemnly professed to believe and engaged 
to teach when he was ordained. 

Whether that clergyman's recently 
acquired opinions are true or false he is a 
falsehearted man to hold them and not 
renounce the ministry of the Church he is 
betraying. 

Another point of ethics is involved in the 
author's glorification of the character of the 
rich layman's mature daughter. 

Whether her father was broad or narrow 
in his theological views, whether he was just 
or unjust as an employer of labor, he was a 
sadly bereaved man and a broken-hearted 
parent (having a reprobate son) and he loved 
the daughter most devotedly : And yet she finds 
it in her heart to forsake that old father in 
his miserable loneliness, for the gratification 
of her selfish whims and vanity. 

I don't like the morality of Mr. Churchill's 
new religion. 

W. C. 



IN PREPARATION 

Love / Law 

With Other 

Vacation Stories 

By REV. WALLACE CARNAHAN 

OMANCE, Politics and Social 
Science are woven into these 
stories, in which Christianity 
is never sacrificed to pruriency 
or fanaticism. The writer is of the 
opinion that many of the popular 
novels of the day are simply — soul 
murder for gain. 




